Whence Magic
by megaphony
Summary: Harry decides to humour Mr. Weasley and attempts to learn a bit of muggle science. His newfound curiosity sets him on a path that will eventually lead him to a new school and a new identity. Grey!Harry, Harry/OMC, AU.
1. Chapter 1

**disclaimer: I own very little. Thus far, all named characters and places belong to JK Rowling. This is not written for any pecuniary ends.**

**Warnings and whatnot: This story will be M/M, so if at a later point you're surprised by that fact, you have only yourself to blame. I plan to post a more adult version of this on AO3, while attempting to follow this site's guidelines (no graphic descriptions of violence? really? grow up...)**

**This story is inspired by the works of Miranda Flairgold, whose unfinished stories haunt my every waking moment. There might be a few similarities to "the methods of rationality" insofar as Harry mixes science and magic (though there will be far more magic than science.)**

**Potential spoilers: Here's the game plan, for those of you that like spoilers. Harry goes through his third and fourth year at Hogwarts, growing steadily more annoyed with the wizarding world as time goes on. Once you-know-who makes a come back, he decides he's had enough, and escapes to a new school. There, he will struggle to catch up with all the other students/races. Sound like fun?**

**Also, I have no beta. If someone wants to volunteer, that would be fun. This is my first fanfic, so I have no idea how that works...**

* * *

Harry potter was a very unusual boy, by muggle standards. Then again, most things were. Even some muggles, with an out-of-place haircut, or a rarely practiced hobby, were unusual by muggle standards.

Harry had tried to explain this to the Dursleys, once, when he was feeling particularly daring. Being a wizards wasn't _that_ odd. Not _really_. If someone caught him reading about magic, they would probably think it was some occult teen-phase. I-like-feeling-unique-so-I'm-reading-about-the-Sal em-witch-trials, or something like that. In fact, it was borderline normal.

Unsurprisingly, they remained unconvinced. And so, despite his pleading, Harry had spent his summer completely isolated from the rest of the wizarding world. The only contact he'd had was in the form a of brief (very brief) conversation with Arthur Weasley.

He'd been cooking lunch for the Dursleys when the phone had rung. Thankfully, he was the only one in the kitchen at the time, so he'd managed to answer it.

"HELLO? HELLO? HARRY? I'M TRYING TO REACH HARRY POTTER"

Mr. Weasley was yelling so loud Harry had to cover the speaker from fear that it would alert one of the Dursleys.

"Hello. Yes. You don't have to yell, Mr. Weasley. Just speak as you normally would."

"Harry?"

"Yes."

"Remarkable! Amazing what muggles come up with… I'll pass you to Ron. I just wanted to try the phone. First time, you know! When you visit next time, I must get you to explain how they work."

By then, uncle Vernon had entered the kitchen.

"Who are you talking to, boy?" He demanded as he pried the phone from Harry's hand. It wasn't so much a question as it was a growl of disapproval. "Hello?"

Harry watched with growing dread as a Vernon's frown deepened.

"THERE'S NO HARRY POTTER HERE! NEVER CONTACT MY FAMILY AGAIN!"

Uncle Vernon had then retaliated by locking Harry's school things away and limiting him to one meal a day for the rest of the summer. Thankfully, the Dursleys had stopped asking him to do chores. One of the new neighbours had visited and complimented them on their cleanliness, saying that it seemed almost too clean. "I don't know how you do it, Petunia. It must be some sort of witchcraft!" They had all laughed, but Harry could see the Dursleys stiffen. Later that day, he was banned from doing anything at all within the house. Hurray for small miracles.

Since then, Harry had been spending all his time in the local library, which was where he was now. Aunt Marge, whom Harry hated with a passion, was visiting. The Dursleys, now lacking any reason to keep him around, had ordered him out of the house. So Harry browsed the shelves, trying to find a book to keep him occupied for the next few hours.

The Surrey library was smaller than the Hogwarts one, obviously, but there were more than enough books to keep him entertained. Harry had spent his first few days reading all the children's books Dudley had been given, which he himself had never read. They weren't particularly entertaining, but to Harry it was a kind of vengeance. He was catching up on the childhood he'd missed.

Shortly thereafter, he moved on to novels, only to abandon them a few days later. Unfortunately, none of the fantasy books lived up to his expectations (nothing could compare to real magic), and few of the non-magical stories managed to hold his attention. And so, Harry found himself wandering through the non-fiction sections. After several minutes of unsuccessful searching, he grudgingly decided to attempt to honour Mr. Weasley's request. He picked out a few books on basic science, electricity, and science history and sat down at one of the empty tables.

~§~

Science, Harry soon discovered, was taught very differently from magic. His courses at Hogwarts had mostly been a combination of memorization and practice. They would memorize incantations, potion recipes, and want movements, and then try them until they worked. Occasionally a professor would mention something about will, or focus, but there wasn't really any theory (at least not in the scientific sense of the word).

Science, on the other hand, had laws and rules and underlying principles. Scientists discovered these through experiment, and then they used them to predict outcomes, design machines, or speculate about things they couldn't otherwise observe. Harry had been genuinely surprised when he read the problems at the end of each textbook chapter. They were all different, yet all relied on the same ideas. Hogwarts questions were never like that!

Harry was reminded of the courses they had to choose last year. Ron had been a strong advocate of taking the easy route, so he and Harry had ignored Arithmancy and Ancient Runes. Now, though, Harry wasn't so sure. Perhaps magic would be easier if he learned the theory behind it, rather than taking courses that relied entirely on memorization. Hermione had said that Runes and Arithmancy were theoretical subjects, right?

With a determined nod, Harry resolved to owl McGonagall about changing his schedule.

~§~

The rest of Harry's summer was spent reading about as much science and mathematics as he could. He'd finished doing his summer school work within the first few weeks (having no chores freed up a lot of his time), so he spent the rest of it learning as much as he could about muggle subjects. He wouldn't have the chance to do so at Hogwarts, after all. Three days before the holidays ended, he was picked up by the Weasleys.

When he finally got his new list of supplies, he was pleased to note that his courses had been changed, but quickly began to regret his decision when he realized he would have to tell Ron. Thankfully, he had the foresight to delay this until the last day, when they met up with Hermione in Diagon alley.

"Bloody hell! How are we supposed to read a book that tries to bite you?!"

They were in Flourish and Blotts, and Ron was evidently unimpressed by Hagrid's choice in literature. The shop assistant spotted the trio and gave an exaggerated sigh.

"Three copies, then?"

"Just two" Harry corrected.

Hermione and Ron gave him a curious look. The assistant, for her part, looked slightly relieved.

"I decided to take Arithmancy and Runes instead," he explained.

"That's brilliant, Harry!"

"Brilliant? How is that brilliant?" Ron demanded. Harry couldn't help but grimace. He knew Ron wasn't going to take it well.

"For one thing," Hermione began, "Now we'll all be sharing classes! You and I share Divination and Care of Magical creatures, and Harry and I share Runes and Arithmancy. I'm still alone in muggle studies, but I suppose it can't be helped…"

"Pigeon hole principle," Harry supplied. No one seemed to notice.

"Yeah, but Harry's my friend" Ron continued. It was Hermione's turn to frown. "And besides, those courses are hard. Why would you want to take them?"

"That's the point," countered Harry, "I want to learn about magic from a theoretical standpoint."

Ron spent the rest of the day sulking and complaining about Harry's class choices whenever the topic came up (which was a lot, considering that they were shopping for school supplies.) Finally, Harry decided he'd heard enough, and set off to buy some… unofficial school supplies.

"You guys go on ahead, ok? I have some stuff I want to get. We'll meet up at the leaky cauldron later, yeah?"

Before they could protest, Harry was lost in the crowd. He'd spent enough time over the summer reading about experiments, and now he was eager to conduct some. But, considering what he'd learned from the Weasley twins, he was going to need some safety equipment. His first stop was an eye gear shop, where he intended to buy some sort of safety goggles. But before he could so much as glance around the shop, someone had snatched his glasses from his face.

"Oooo… These aren't one of mine! Mind if I take a look?"

A (now blurry) figure was gesticulating wildly in front of him.

"Um… I suppose. As long as I get them back."

"Of course, boy. Of course. Now, then, what do they do?"

Harry wasn't quite sure how to respond.

"They correct my vision, sir?"

"Oh…" The man sighed, "I'm afraid you won't find anything here if you can't afford basic vision correction, my boy. Clear-sight potion is the cheapest thing we sell… Unless that's why you're here?"

"I… Sorry. I don't know what that does." Harry replied. He really wished the man would give him back his glasses.

"Ah! Muggle-born, then? It's a potion that corrects your vision. Fifty galleons, and you won't need muggle glasses ever again!"

Harry blinked. And then blinked again.

"I'll take it."

One potion later, and Harry was staring wide-eyed around the shop as the owner described his wares.

"We have your standard sports gear, including binoculars and glasses with slowing spells and magnification. Potion goggles, that block out fumes and let peer into even the most murky brews. Auror glasses, though I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you're not licensed. We have library glasses, that can store thousands of identifying traits. They're great for herbologists, potion masters, and explorers, as they let you identify substances in the wild. We can also cast custom enchantments, all of which are detailed in our catalogue", he waved to a massive tome resting on a pedestal in the corner, "We also have a range of more… let's call them cosmetic glasses. They don't do anything particularly interesting; they're mostly for the purposes of fashion."

"And finally," he said, as he pulled back a curtain covering on of the walls, "we have heirlooms and antiques. I wouldn't normally mention them, but…" He eyed Harry's hand, which still held his Gringotts card "I think you could probably afford them."

That had been a pain to get, Harry recalled. The goblins had required that he sign all the forms in blood (his own blood). On the plus side, he didn't have to carry money anymore.

"Do any of them do anything interesting?" asked Harry.

"Well, they're mostly of historical value. A few of them are from old families that died out. The man who sold me those tried to convince me they were Slytherin's, for example, but I haven't been able to verify that." He pointed to a set of glasses not entirely dissimilar to his old ones. They were also round, but the frames were made of delicately woven gold shaped into snakes and roses (an odd combination, Harry thought.)

"The most interesting thing they do is hiss at the person wearing them." He continued, "They've been dated back to the tenth century, though, so they're quite expensive."

"Can I try them on?" asked Harry. If his suspicions were correct, he might hear more than hissing…

"Certainly. But if you damage them, you'll have to pay full price. I hardly think you will, though. They're goblin forged."

The man handed him the frames, which were much heavier than he'd expected. Sure enough, as soon as the metal touched his ears, he heard soft voices whispering.

"_Another pair of eyesss! Another who ssseeks to sssee what only we can show! But will he be able to asssk nicely?"_

Harry desperately wanted to ask, but he didn't know how the shopkeeper would react to parseltongue. He was sure that by now the man must have recognized him, but he knew from experience that not everyone believe the Prophet's claims that he was a parselmouth, and he didn't want to risk it.

"How much are they?"

"Ten thousand galleons." the shopkeeper replied, raising an eyebrow as if daring him to buy them.

_Shit_. Harry thought. Way too much to risk buying without knowing what they did.

"Can I… um…-

"Ask them a few questions? I'd expect nothing less. In fact, I was rather hoping you would."

The man was grinning now, clearly amused at Harry's discomfort. The boy shot him an annoyed look at turned his attention back to the voices whispering in his ear.

"_Sssso… what can you show me?"_ he muttered.

"_A speaker! We can show you magikssss sspeaker. We can let you ssssee the structure of sssspells. Peer into the ssswirls of a wizardssss ssssoul. All you have to do isss asssssk."_

"_Could you show me? Please?"_

Harry's vision suddenly swarmed with light. All around the shop, objects glowed various colours. And around each colour floated a set of runes (some of which Harry recognized from his new textbooks). More shocking than that was the shopkeeper. In his chest, Harry could see three hearts, each a different colour, pumping _something_ though the man. Whatever it was, it shifted constantly, taking the shape of flowing water, lightning, drifting snow, settling dust… It swirled in a circle passing though each heart, taking occasional detours to explore a limb, or coil temporarily in the man's wand.

"Well, boy," asked the man, "What do you see?"

Harry wasn't sure if he should answer.

"_Can you stop?"_ He asked. The world went dark again.

"I could see which objects contained magic." he finally replied. It wasn't a lie, technically. He didn't think he should mention that he could see the man's magic. It seemed somewhat intrusive to Harry; like seeing someone naked without their permission. Nevertheless, the man was still impressed.

"Really? Astounding! That would certainly save curse breakers a lot of time… not having to cast hundreds of detection charms would certainly speed things up. Will you be buying them?"

"I have a question, actually."

"Certainly, my boy."

"I'm starting Ancient Runes this term, and I was wondering if you had anything that would let me see the runes used on an enchanted object." As long as Harry was lying about the glasses, he might as well embrace his Slytherin side a bit...

The man looked bemused.

"Goodness, no, boy. If I could do that, well… that would probably give the founders a run for their money. Finding the runes for a spell takes years of research."

Harry gulped and nodded.

"Well," he said, "I think I'd like to buy these, in any case. They're quite nice. And a pair of potion goggles as well," he added, remembering his original reason for coming into the shop.

~§~

The rest of Harry's little expedition wasn't nearly as eventful. He got some triple layered dragon-hide gloves (guaranteed to protect from most punctures, spells, and potions), a book on basic defensive warding (which would, with any luck, let him contain his experiments), extra parchment and ink to record any findings, and wilderness survival kit (which contained such useful items as a collapsable potion lab, first aid kit, and a small magic tent). He tried to buy a book on spell creation but it turned out, much to harry's surprise and annoyance, that a ministry license was required. He stored all of this in a bottomless passenger bag, with the exception of his new glasses, which he decided to wear. Even though he now had perfect vision, he felt naked without them on.

Ron, of course, only worsened when he realized Harry's new glasses had snakes on them. Yet, in spite of his constant grumbling, Harry couldn't bring himself to care. This was going to be an interesting year.

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**Does it have potential? Review?**


	2. Chapter 2

**A.N.: I got my first flame, guys! Woo! How exciting. I feel like a proper fanfic author now.**

**I doubt I'll be able to keep up this update pace, but I'll try to post at least once a week.**

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Harry sat quietly in his compartment, contemplating the news he'd heard. He was hoping that this year he would be able to fade away from the public eye and pursue his own projects. But apparently, there was an escaped convict out to get him. No doubt his profs would be keeping a close eye on him, making it difficult to slip away and conduct experiments.

He paused for a moment to look at his friends. They were remarkably calm, all things considered. Ron was currently bickering with Hermione about her new cat, as if they hadn't just been discussing his potential death at the hands of a mass murderer. _At least they're not being loud_, though Harry. In spite of their arguing, they were taking pains not to wake the professor, who was sleeping in the corner.

As quietly as he could, Harry asked his glasses to activate, and spent the next few minutes studying the magic surrounding him.

The wizarding world, Harry soon discovered, was filled with much more magic than he'd expected. The windows were spelled. The seats were spelled. The hinges on the door were spelled. All around him, mundane objects glowed in faint pastel hues, surrounded by runes that drifted like pendulums on a wind chime. Harry took out his ancient runes book and tried to identify some of the runes he saw floating around the room. He only managed to find four of them before he was interrupted.

"Well," drawled Malfoy from the doorway, "if it isn't Potter and his fan club."

The blonds eye's widened slightly when Harry looked up.

"Well, well! Nice glasses, Potty. Slytherin looks good on you."

"Piss off, Malfoy." grumbled Ron. Undeterred, the blond continued.

"I heard your family happened upon some money this summer, Weasley. What was it, seven hundred galleons? Can't have lasted you very long. That's hardly enough to buy a decent wardrobe. Though, considering the state of your robes…" He gave Ron an exaggerated once-over "Perhaps you haven't spent it yet."

Ron was fuming, now. His robes were, as it happened, new. But before he could respond, Harry fixed Malfoy with a bored gaze, and did his best to imitate the Slytherin's drawl.

"I know you love the sound of your own voice, Malfoy, but could you keep it down? We wouldn't want to wake the professor."

Harry tilted his head lazily in Lupin's direction. Malfoy, for his part, just narrowed his eyes and walked away, signalling his two oafish body guards to follow him.

"Bloody git," Ron fumed, "What sort of ponce spends seven hundred galleons on robes."

Harry felt his face redden a bit at that. His glasses had cost over ten times as much. Sure, they could see magic, but still… Harry returned to his book in an effort to ignore the uncomfortable mix of guilt and embarrassment. He didn't look up until nearly an hour later, when the train began to slow.

"Are we here already? I though the train ride was longer than that," asked Harry. Perhaps time passed more quickly while you read?

"I don't think so," replied Hermione as she glanced out the window, "we're still in the middle of the woods."

As she and Ron stared outside, Harry noticed the magical lights within the compartment begin to flicker. The runes began to shiver, and the magic circulating through everyone started being pulled slight towards the door. With it, a chill seemed to descend on the compartment.

"Umm… guys? Do you feel that?" Harry asked tentatively. _Please let this not be another weird thing that only I can feel. Hearing voices last year was bad enough._

"Yeah…" muttered Ron, to Harry's relief.

One of the runes tied to the light on the ceiling shattered, and the compartment fell into darkness. Only the light of the moon, streaming through the window, let them see anything.

Suddenly, the compartment door swung open, and before them stood a towering figure in tattered black robes. Its breaths came in long, heaving rasps, that seemed to pull at all the magic in the room. Distantly, Harry could hear Ron, Hermione, and a third voice saying something in the background. He couldn't make out what they were saying, though, over the sound of pleading, terrified screams.

~§~

"So, Potter," began Malfoy, all too perkily for Harry's liking, "heard you ran into some trouble on the train."

"Piss off, Malfoy." spat Ron.

"Nice trained monkey you've got there, Potty. Does it say anything else?"

"Why don't you go back to your own table, Malfoy," replied Hermione, cutting off whatever Ron was going to say, "I'm sure your housemates appreciate your temporary absence, but I can promise you we would appreciate it more."

_Why does every year have to start like this?_ Harry wondered, as he gazed out at the great hall. _Can't the git just leave us alone?_

Malfoy continued to ignore his friends. "So, roses and snakes, Potter? Rather effeminate, if I may say. I suppose the snakes go well with the whole heir-of-Slytherin thing, but roses?"

"They're goblin forged. Date back to the tenth century. I happen to like them." Harry replied in as bored a tone as he could manage. Malfoy had the decency to look surprised.

"And you know I'm not the heir, Malfoy. We covered this last year."

"Oh, but we didn't. Weaslette disappeared, and then you showed up with her blood and battered body. Highly suspicious, if you ask me. They never did say who was responsible, did they? What did you do, Potter, promise the old coot you'd never do it again? Ickle golden boy's seen the error of his ways?"

_Two could play at that game._

"If you want to know what happened, Malfoy, you could always ask your father. I'm sure he'd be delighted to tell you about all his failed plots. You might have be rather specific, though. I hear there are quite a few of them."

The blond's eyes narrowed. "I'm sure I've no idea what you're getting at, Potter."

"Is there a problem, gentlemen?"

They both turned to see McGonagall standing a few feet away.

"No, professor." they replied in unison.

"Might I suggest you head to class, then? Breakfast ended five minutes ago."

~§~

Harry's first class was Ancient Runes. And apparently, so was Malfoy's. They sat at opposite ends of the room and glared fiercely at each other. Hermione sighed and took a set next to Harry.

Their professor, Bathsheda Babbling, was an elderly witch in grey-brown robes. She strode purposefully towards the front of the class, surveyed the students for a moment before declaring: "Twenty seven. All here, then." She spun around and started drawing runes on the chalk-board.

_No roll-call_, Harry noticed. Hermione almost looked offended.

"Welcome to your first class in Ancient Runes. For some of you, the difference between this subject and your earlier courses might come as a bit of a shock. This is a purely theoretical course. There will be no wand waving, no brewing, no magic of any kind. All you'll need is parchment, ink, and a good reference text.

"Ancient Runes is a mix of magic theory and history. What we know of runes has been recovered from ancient texts, most dating back to the days of the Hogwarts founders. We have only partial knowledge. There is much we don't know. It's estimated that only a fifth of runes have been successfully translated, and the grammar of the language remains entirely unknown. However, what we do know will help you understand the nature of magic. It is the foundation of enchanting, it is critical for wand making, and informs a great deal of healing magic.

"If any of that doesn't appeal to you, you have up to a week to transfer to a different class. Now, can anyone tell me the three fundamental methods of casting?"

As expected, Hermione's hand shot up.

"Yes?"

"Enchanting, wand casting, and wandless casting."

"And can you tell us why these are different?"

"For each method, the runes manifest themselves in a different place. When enchanting, runes are tied to the object in question, making the spells last for a long time. When casting with a wand, runes temporarily manifest themselves in the wand core, allowing the spell to be cast by directing magic through the wand. When casting wandlessly, runes are manifested within the caster's body, and require much more power and will to be sustained."

"Correct, miss…"

"Granger."

"What miss Granger described provides an explanation as to why wandless magic is so difficult. Not only does the caster require a strong magical core, they must also know the precise runic structure of the spell in question. And, since the runic structure of spells is usually unknown, even the most powerful wizards are limited by the historical knowledge we have managed to preserve. Yes, mister Potter?"

Harry noticed that both Malfoy's and Hermione's flicker to him in surprise. He never asked questions.

"Are there any direct ways of determining a spell's runic structure?"

"No, unfortunately. Two hundred years ago, there was an effort to reconstruct spells by trial and error, but the procedure was incredibly dangerous. Most of the people involved were killed when volatile rune combinations reacted violently with their surroundings, or exhausted all their magic reserves. Since then, the ministry has required a license to experiment with new runic combinations. It's very similar to spell creation, in that respect. Incredibly dangerous, and hardly worth the payoff. Now, if you'll all turn to page five in your text, we will being by studying the basic elemental runes…

~§~

In charms, Harry decided to put his glasses to use. They were studying variations of the hovering charm, and Harry was trying to spot any patterns. He'd noticed with some satisfaction that what Hermione had said about casting was evidently true. Whenever a student would cast the spell, a set of runes would flare into life within their wand, only to die away after their magic was channelled through it.

Harry also noticed that, though everyone had the same three magical hearts pumping magic through their body, they weren't all the same size, nor did they all have the same amount of magic. Neville, for example, had a thin stream of magic pumped by three medium sized hearts. Malfoy, to Harry's great annoyance, had a lot of magic, but only one of his hearts was large. The other two seemed nearly vestigial, reluctantly pumping magic while the main heart dominated the flow. Harry's working hypothesis was that the size of the hearts corresponded to a caster's will. Why there were three of them… Harry didn't know. Again, he decided to ask a question.

"Professor?"

"Yes, my boy?"

"Is there a limit to how fast we can move objects using hovering charms?"

"Excellent question!" this caught nearly everyone's attention. _Excellent questions _had a habit of showing up in homework. "The speed of an objects flight depends on the amount of magic the witch or wizard dedicates to that spell. The amount of magic you release is often difficult to control, at first, but with practice you should be able to control the speed. Now, as for a limit, that is entirely dependent on how much magic the witch or wizard has at their disposal."

_Makes sense, I suppose._ Harry raised his hand again.

"What if you wanted to move something really fast. Is there any way to increase the size of one's magical core?"

He regretted his question almost immediately. A few students gasped, and some floating objects jerked violently, or fell out of the air. Ron nearly dropped his wand, and Malfoy gave a short (probably involuntary) laugh. Professor Flitwick frowned before answering.

"I hope for your sake, mister Potter, that your question is born from ignorance and curiosity. Changing one's magical core is incredibly dark magic, and not something any decent wizard should even consider. I will not tolerate these kinds of question in my classroom. Is that clear?"

"Yes, professor. I'm sorry. I didn't know, sir."

Flitwick seemed appeased, but Harry could see students giving him suspicious glances. Malfoy just smirked at him knowingly. Harry rolled his eyes and returned to his casting, trying to ignore the his growing dread.

~§~

Harry tried to escape get away as soon as class ended, but apparently Malfoy was faster.

"So, ickle Potter wants to practice dark magic, eh? I guess I shouldn't be surprised, what with you being the heir of Slytherin."

Ron opened his mouth to say something, but the blond waved at him dismissively.

"Yeah, yeah. Piss off, Malfoy. Heard it before. Tell me, Potter, what's it like to get away with everything? First Dumbledore lets the whole chamber of secrets thing slide, and now Flitwick lets you get away with talking about dark arts in class. Must be nice to have that kind of immunity."

By now, a small crowd of students had gathered along the sidelines, muttering furiously to one another. _Brilliant,_ thought Harry, _just when I thought that rumour died, Malfoy has to go and resurrect it._

"If you think I'm the heir, Malfoy, you obviously haven't been listening. You could ask Ginny, if you like. She was there. Or Ron."

"Oh, of course! Why didn't I think of that" drawled the blond, his voice dripping with sarcasm, "it's not like Ron would lie to protect his friend. The only impartial person there was Lockhart, and he's in St Mungo's, now. Besides, I hear Ron never made it past the cave-in, and the Weaslette was unconscious the whole time. Am I wrong?"

Harry grit his teeth. _This can't be happening. Please tell me this isn't happening._

"Technically," Harry began, trying to choose his words carefully, "that's true. But if you think I'd willingly hurt Ginny or Hermione, you're obviously out of your mind."

"Ah, but Hermione was never hurt, was she? The heir sure got a lot of practice petrifying people before he got around to Granger, didn't he?"

_He's been planning this._ Harry realize quite suddenly. _Probably been practicing this argument all summer. Shit, shit, shit…_ He had to say something. If he walked away now, everyone would believe Malfoy. But there was nothing he could say. There had been no witnesses, and all the evidence – the diary, the sword – were secrets. Dumbledore had prohibited him from talking about them. _Shit!_

"Well," said Malfoy, smirking in triumph as he walked away, "I suppose that settles that, then. See you around, Potter."


	3. Chapter 3

**A.N.: This is not a Dark!Harry story. He might do a bit of dark magic later (spoilers: he will), but he won't become evil, or a blood purist, or join you-know-who.**

**Also, with regards to his corporeal patronus, he hasn't learned about his father's animagus form yet, so it doesn't make sense for it to be a stag. Hopefully my version won't be too much of a cliche.**

* * *

School was hell. His broom had been destroyed, and in the weeks the followed, Malfoy managed to convince half the school that Harry was the heir of Slytherin. Most of the Gryffindors still believed Harry, and a large part of Slytherin knew that Malfoy was just saying things to make his life miserable, but Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw were all weary of him. The blond had even managed to weave Sirius black into the story.

When the convict had attacked the Gryffindor portrait, all the students had been sent to the great hall to sleep. Hardly ten minutes had passed before whispers started to circulate. _Apparently_ Sirius wanted to kidnap Harry and raise him as his own son. The Blacks, of course, were known to be a dark family, and Sirius had been close to the Potters... perhaps on orders from Voldemort to steal Harry as a child? Who could know.

Harry was genuinely surprised at how ridiculous the rumours were getting. It was a testament to Malfoy's skills that he'd managed to convince so many students of something so ridiculous. It also didn't help that Harry had an uncanny ability to ask exactly the wrong sort of questions in class. Their previous defence against the dark arts lecture had gone particularly poorly.

"Professor," Harry had asked, "what exactly is it that makes a creature dark? Why are Basilisk considered dark, for example, when Nundus aren't?"

"Well," Lupin had replied, far too cautiously for Harry's taste, "there isn't any specific set of criterion, to be honest. A lot of it depends on cultural perception and historical considerations. The actual classification is done by the ministry. In France, for example, vampires aren't considered dark, but they are in Britain."

"Isn't that a bit arbitrary? Why bother to call them dark creatures, then? What does that actually accomplish?"

The muttering had started again. _Oh great_, Harry had thought, _this is going to be another of those decent-wizards-don't-talk-about-that-sort-of-thing questions, wasn't it?_ Instead of chastising him, Lupin had tried to turn the whole thing into a teaching moment. Unfortunately, doing so gave Harry just enough rope to hang himself.

"Tell me Mr. Potter, have any of your teachers ever given you a definition of 'dark magic'?"

Harry thought for a moment. "No, sir."

"And have you ever seen an such definition in a book?"

"No, sir."

"The reason you haven't encountered such a definition, Mr. Potter, is because there isn't one. 'Dark magic' is a catch-all term to describe magic that is illegal or taboo, rather than a strictly defined category."

That seemed ridiculous to Harry. 'Dark' was a term that was used in textbooks, in ministry documents, and in laws. But the way Lupin had described it made it seem like a propaganda term. And so, without considering the consequences, Harry had asked the question he would come to regret more than any other thus far.

"So there's nothing inherently bad about dark magic? Apart from it being illegal?"

"That, mister Potter," Lupin had replied, an infuriatingly calm smile on his face, "is an excellent question."

The next day, everyone was muttering about how Harry Potter, the heir of Slytherin, didn't think dark magic was bad. Malfoy had had a field day with that. Worse still, Ron and Hermione had demanded to know why he was asking those kinds of questions. Ron, who had grown up learning to equate dark magic with evil, couldn't seem to understand why the whole thing was so confusing to Harry. Dark magic was bad; why would you question that? Hermione, on the other hand, couldn't quite grasp the notion that even if something was illegal, it wasn't necessarily evil. The more Harry tried to explain himself, the less sympathetic they seemed to get.

The problem was compounded further by the fact that the more Harry asked questions, the less things seemed to make sense. A few of the Slytherins had started slipping him notes containing seemingly innocuous spells that were considered dark by the ministry. And, damn his curiosity, Harry felt compelled to figure out why.

"It's a variation on the summoning charm," he'd explained to Hermione, "Why would it be considered dark, when _accio_ is perfectly fine."

"I don't know, Harry, but I'm sure there's a very good reason."

"Well, yeah, I'd assumed as much," he'd replied, getting more frustrated by the second, "I just want to know what that reason is."

In hindsight, the common-room hadn't been the best place to have that discussion.

The final nail in the coffin came from the fact that it was impossible to do any research on the topic, because books about the dark arts were illegal as well. As much as he'd like to consult a book and figure out why these spells were banned, he couldn't.

Eventually, Harry had learned to keep his mouth shut. No good could come from asking, so he decided to focus his attention elsewhere. It was rather infuriating, though. He'd started this year with the goal of unifying everything he knew about magic, and building a logical framework similar to muggle science. But the more questions he asked, the more things seemed to be completely arbitrary.

In Runes he learned that most magic was inherited. Occasionally someone would invent a new spell, but the process behind spell creation relied on a lot of luck and instinct. No one really knew the rules behind what made a spell work. All they knew was that some combinations of runes worked, some did nothing, and others reacted violently (it turned out that one of the reasons people used wands was that they protected wizards from volatile rune combinations. The wand core would essentially shut down if it detected violent magic.) The founders had much more impressive magic simply because spells had been forgotten over time, and there was no good way to discover new ones.

The one exception to this, much to Harry's dismay, was potions. Potion masters could easily experiment with new ingredients, so it was really the only branch of magic that was understood systematically. On the bright side, Harry was now getting much better at potions (not that his grades were any indication. Snape seemed to hate him as much as ever.)

Babbling hadn't been joking when she said that Runes was a purely theoretical subject. They learned, for example, that fire runes tended to show up in spells related to heat or fire, but there wasn't anything you could do with that information. It was like learning how to read without learning how to write.

Arithmancy wasn't much better. Harry had been hoping that it would be similar to mathematics, and was rather horrified to discover that it was much closer to numerology. Some numbers seemed to be inherently magical. But, yet again, no one knew why. More infuriating, no one else seemed to _care_ why.

~§~

After a month of dissatisfying classes, Harry decided to start conducting experiments. His first experiment had been prompted by a question he'd asked in ancient runes. If runes determine what a spell does, what's the point of incantations and wand movements? If incantations are so important, why is it possible to cast spells silently? He'd noticed, using his new glasses, that spells only seemed to fail when not enough magic was used, or when the runes were wrong (when they appeared in the wrong order, or when students accidentally used the wrong runes. Harry still wasn't sure exactly how that happened...)

The answer, apparently, was that incantations and wand movements helped focus the caster's will. And that, as far as Harry was concerned, sounded a lot like the placebo effect.

So Harry had asked Hermione to make him a list of simple spells, and give him limited information about each. Each spell had a description of the effect, an incantation, and wand movements. Hermione made him seven lists; one with all the information, one with only descriptions, one with descriptions and incantations, etc. If Harry's hypothesis was correct, he should be able to learn to cast them as long as he had the description.

On the first Hogsmeade weekend, while everyone else was out enjoying themselves, Harry had found an abandoned classroom and tried to learn the spells. It wasn't as if he could go to Hogsmeade, anyway. None of the professors thought it would be a good idea for him to leave the castle.

After a few hours of attempted spell casting, Harry's efforts bore fruit. In his experiment notebook he wrote down his first result.

_Hypothesis: incantations and wand movements are psychological aids that aren't actually required to cast spells._

_Conclusion: True. All that matters is rune structure._

To be honest, Harry was rather surprised. Surely someone should have noticed this by now! Then again, the wizarding world didn't seem all that interested in understanding why or how magic worked. He added to his conclusion:

_Alternatively, all spells tested were too easy to notice any difference._

He'd have to ask Hermione about that later. If the spells were first year level, he'd probably have to re-do the experiment with something more difficult.

Harry still had a few hours to kill, so he tried to think of some more experiments he could do. After a bit of thought, he decided to try to cast spells wandlessly. According to Babbling, all you needed was a large core, a strong will, and the runic structure. He knew he had a large core. He'd worked up the courage to look at himself in the mirror using his glasses, and was quite shocked to find that his three magical hearts were quite big, and his magic nearly flooded his whole body. He could use his glasses to find the runic structure. All that remained was to determine if he had enough magical will.

After cycling through all the spells he knew, he settled on _incendio_ which relied a single fire rune. He cast the spell with his wand a few times, trying his best to figure out where the runes were coming from. It didn't quite work, though. While wands made spell casting easy, they also took away a lot of the effort. It was difficult to feel what your magic was doing when the wand took care of everything going on behind the scenes.

He eventually moved to to trying to cast the spell wandlessly. He held out his hand and tried to imitate what he'd done with his wand. Nothing happened.

After an unsuccessful half and hour, Harry packed up his things and decided to hit the library.

~§~

At breakfast the next day, Ron would not shut up about Hogsmeade.

"...But the best was Honeydukes. They had every every type of candy I'd ever seen. Even some of the ones we saw in Egypt!"

"That sounds awesome, Ron," Harry finally interrupted. "Hermione, you remember those spell lists I made you write?"

"Oh, yeah! I meant to ask you, what were you going to do with those?"

"Well, I was going to try to learn them. To see if you could cast spells without knowing what they did, or without wand movements."

Hermione immediately looked apologetic.

"Oh! Sorry, Harry. I didn't think you actually wanted to learn them. Those were fourth and fifth year spells. But I can make you new lists, if you want!"

_Fourth and fifth year? Really?_

"What did you think I wanted them for, just out of curiosity."

"Well," replied Hermione, looked slightly embarrassed, "I thought that you might be trying to practice looking things up in the library, so I didn't want to give you anything that would be in our spell books."

"Why the hell would he want to do that?" asked Ron.

"I don't know if you noticed," bristled Hermione, "But Harry's actually been taking his studies seriously this year. Not all of us our content to rely on our friends to do out schoolwork."

Hoping to avoid an argument, Harry quickly asked Hermione the first question he could think of.

"Speaking of learning spells, Hermione, I was wondering if you knew of any spells to repel dementors?"

Hermione looked thoughtful for a moment before replying that she didn't, but Lupin had cast something on the train that seemed to do that. Harry resolved to ask the defence professor about it later that day.

~§~

The spell was called the patronus charm. Lupin had showed him two versions of it: one that created a glowing shield, and another that created an animal. He had claimed that they were the same spell, but Harry could see that their runes were different. In the animal version, the wall rune was replaced with a string of two runes that Harry didn't recognize. He'd asked Lupin to sustain the spell for a few moment while he wrote down their rune structure, under the guise of writing a description.

Lupin had told him that it was a very difficult charm, and that Harry almost certainly wouldn't be able to cast it. It relied on using a positive memory, and required strong magic to cast. However, Harry's earlier experiments had taught him that even fifth year spells were relatively easy to learn as long as he focused on getting the runes right. Once he ignored the superfluous elements of spell casting, things got much easier. He suspected that the positive memory things was similar to incantations and wand movements; a psychological crutch that helped people get the runes to come out correctly.

Sure enough, after only a few days of practicing, Harry could perform both variants of the spell. To his great dismay, however, his corporeal patronus took the form of a boa constrictor. Lupin had mentioned that the patronus was related to the caster's history and personality, and would often mean something special to the witch or wizard in question. Harry recognized it as the snake he'd set free in the zoo years ago. It certainly made sense. It was a happy memory, and one of the first memories Harry had of using magic. It was also related to his ability to speak parseltongue.

So yes, his corporeal patronus reflected him and his history. However, if anyone saw it, it would only further his reputation as the heir of Slytherin, so Harry decided to stick to the shield version unless absolutely necessary.

With a satisfied nod, Harry left the abandoned classroom in which he had been practicing, failing to notice Scabbers, who had been hiding in the corner, watching him through narrowed eyes.


	4. Chapter 4

**A.N: over 10k words! Woo! I feel accomplished.**

* * *

Harry was bored out of his mind. Had he known that his little experiment over a month ago would make charms and transfiguration so dull, he might not have done it. It had gotten to the point where Harry could recreate most third year spells after watching a demonstration and performing a small number of unsuccessful attempts. And since these attempts didn't involve any wand movements or speaking, it looked like he wasn't doing anything at all. Whenever they had a practical lesson (which was nearly every lesson) Harry found himself with nothing to do after the first five or ten minutes. It felt like cheating...

Filtwick and McGonagall, who still weren't used to the idea of Harry being ahead of the other students, would occasionally demand that he pay attention, or that he demonstrate that he had figured out the spell and was not slacking off. Harry obliged, pointing his wand and silently casting whatever was required. One of the perks of being the boy-who-lived was that whenever he did something remarkable, people tended to accept it and move on. And so, no one was really that surprised that he wasn't using incantations to cast spells. No one even bothered to ask him how he did it.

Fortunately, defence against the dark arts was still fun. The spells were easy enough, and Lupin made the lessons enjoyable and entertaining. The professor did genuinely seem to care for Harry, which confused him a bit. At first, he thought that Lupin's kindness towards him was the same old hero worship that he was used to, but after a few months of class, it was clear that that wasn't the case. Whatever the reason, Harry found himself making excuses to spend more time with the mild-mannered teacher. He would stay after class to ask questions, or drop by unannounced on weekends to ask for clarification when he found a passage in a book that he didn't understand. In the back of his mind, Harry wondered if this was what it was like to have family.

He'd started to devote more effort to his other classes. His enchanted glasses and secret knowledge of spells didn't help him directly, but the free time they afforded him allowed the young Gryffindor do study more and spend more time on his homework. He grudgingly started to enjoy his potions homework. The classes were still unbearable, but when he was left to his own devices he found the subject was rather calming. In his spare time, Harry started experimenting with non-magical ingredients to make potions taste better. After weeks of experiments, he concluded that the only thing he really had to worry about was pH and viscosity. As long as he stayed away from really acidic fruits, or didn't change the consistency of the potion too much, his modified potions generally worked as they should. His mint flavoured dreamless-sleep potion, in particular, worked wonderfully. He passed that information along to the Weasley twins, who simply grinned knowingly and asked "Is that so?"

In any case, Harry now had a second result for his experiment notebook.

___Hypothesis: Potions can be made to taste better by adding non-magical ingredients._

___Conclusion: True, as long as they don't change the pH or the consistency._

That done, Harry decided to try tackle spell casting again. He'd more or less constructed a picture of how magic worked, at least on the basic level. Runes were created using some mysterious force that wizards called 'will', magic was manipulated by the beating of three hearts, and when the magic met the runes, things happened.

Will was the tricky part. One problem he faced was that it was extremely difficult to create runes if you didn't have a desired effect in mind. Only witches and wizards who were intimately familiar with their magical core, and who'd spent decades practicing could do it. As much as Harry wanted to cast each rune individually to try to figure out what they did, he couldn't. To complicate matters further, will didn't seem to work unless you knew that something was possible. So if Harry knew that a rune set existed that create a particular effect, he could usually cast the spell (there were a few exceptions to this. Healing, warding, alchemy, and other kinds of complex magic were still a mystery to him.) If he just picked an idea out of thin air, however, he couldn't.

The only way around this, as far as Harry could tell, was to find some way to get intimately acquainted with his magical core in order to be able to test out each rune. If he could figure out what they did, and how the grammar of the language worked, then he would be able to know, without checking a book, if a spell was possible. The problem with ___that_ was that anything involving contact with one's magical core was considered dark. The only legal way to do it was to live long enough and do enough magic that it became second nature, and Harry didn't want to wait eighty years before being able to continue his study.

~§~

He honestly didn't know how he'd missed it. For weeks, he'd been looking around his classrooms using his Slytherin specs, and only now did he notice Hermione's necklace. It was a remarkable piece of magic, and unlike an other he'd seen before. Rather than being written out as a paragraph with a clear beginning and end, the runes on her pendant wove around themselves in an intricate closed loop that reminded him of a celtic knot. He'd wondered briefly how loops of runes were different from the usual layout, but decided that there was no point in speculating until he could actually experiment.

He asked her about it during lunch.

"Hermione?"

"Yes?"

"I was wondering where you got that necklace."

"Oh, why?"

That wasn't the reaction he'd been expecting. Trying to hide his surprise, he quickly replied, "Just curious. The chain is rather nice."

He wasn't lying, either. The chain was made of elaborate gold and bronze knots, interlinked in a way that made it curl into a loose helix.

"Oh, well thank you. My grandmother bought it for me from a muggle jewellery store."

___Liar_, thought Harry, though he was too amused by her nervous blush to really care.

"Careful, Harry," Ron teased, "first the glasses, and now this? Someone might think you're a poof!"

He laughed, along with a few of the Gryffindor boys, but they were the only ones. Hermione looked uncomfortable, and Harry couldn't help but feel slightly offended. Insulting gay people was something he was used to hearing from the Dursleys, not his friends.

"Oh, cheer up," laughed Ron as he punched him playfully on the shoulder, "I know you're not. I'm only joking."

~§~

That night, Harry decided it was time to take a trip to the restricted section. He'd spent days combing through books, looking for any sign reference to core magic. Needless to say, he was unsuccessful. So, taking care not to wake any of his housemates, Harry unpacked his invisibility cloak and snuck out of Gryffindor tower.

He'd gotten much better at navigating the castle at night. In first year, he'd been terrified of getting caught or getting lost. Now, though, he knew Hoqwarts halls like the back of his hand, and he could easily see when someone was nearby thanks to his enchanted eyewear. The restricted section was also much easier to navigate now that he could tell which books were cursed.

He took out his wand and used a handy little spell Hermione had taught him. It would make books glow based on how often a particular phrase appeared in them. He scanned the book shelves, skimming through everything that contained the phrase 'magical core'. There were quite a few; a lot more than he was expecting, in fact. Most of them, however, made only passing reference to it, and he quickly learned to ignore books that didn't glow particularly brightly.

After an hour of searching through every book (there were only about twelve that glowed brightly), the most useful thing he managed to find was a brief passage in an old healing text about magical exhaustion and other related ailments.

___"Damage to the magical core is particularly difficult to diagnose due to the fact that there are no good methods of examining it. Only a handful of select wizards posses a strong enough connection to their core to detect anomalies. Therefore, we are limited to indirect methods of detection._

___"In some extreme cases, the ministry may grant permission to use dark magic to probe the core directly. Should this need arise, readers will need to consult Myra Gorey's book on core magic (published 1264, banned in 1273). We caution readers to limit themselves to the first three chapters of said tome, as the rituals contained in the later half will have permanent effects."_

That was it, then. One banned book, published centuries ago. That was his only lead. With a reluctant sigh, Harry copied the passage and returned to his dormitory.

~§~

The next day, Harry decided to stay behind after defence class. He'd been quite disappointed with last night's discovery and really wanted something to distract him. So summoning all of his Gryffindor courage, he asked the question that had been on his mind since the first lecture of the year.

"Professor."

"Yes, Harry? Did you have a question about today's lesson?"

"No, sir. I have a question but it's a bit more... um..." Harry bit his lip, "...personal."

Lupin, to his credit, just smiled encouragingly. Harry cleared his throat and continued.

"I was wondering why you're so nice to me, sir. Not that you're not nice to the other students, or anything. You're a great teacher. It's just that, well-

"It's all right, Harry," the older wizard interrupted, "I know what you mean."

He stared away for a moment, as if trying to organize his thoughts. Harry couldn't help but feel nervous. He hadn't felt this exposed since his first day of Hogwarts.

"I was friends with your father, Harry. We had a group of friends, a bit like Ron and Hermione with you, who did absolutely everything together. You wouldn't remember, but I spent a lot of time with you when you were a baby. We were close right up until the very end."

Lupin smiled sadly before continuing.

"I met him and the other in Hogwarts, and were friends long before your father started dating Lilly. We had a club, of sorts, called the Marauders. We were a bit like the Weasley twins, actually, and spent most of our time pranking people. I'm sure you could get some of the older professors to tell you stories.

"I guess I can't help but think of James whenever I see you, Harry. I'm sorry if it's made you uncomfortable. I know I should probably try to treat you like any other student. It's hard, though. You look just like him."

Harry shook his head. "It's fine, sir. I don't mind. I actually kind of... well..." Harry blushed. Why was it so hard to admit he enjoyed the attention? Lupin seemed to get the picture, though, and chuckled softly.

"Sir," Harry started to ask.

"You can call me Lupin, Harry."

"Right... well. Who were the others, if you don't mind me asking. The Marauders, that is."

"Apart from James and me, there was Peter Pettigrew and Sirius Black. Peter died, though, and Black, as you know, turned out to be a death eater."

Harry could see that Lupin was getting uncomfortable, so he quickly changed the subject.

"What about my mother? Did you know her too?"

The defence professor smiled again and started telling Harry stories about his parents, and their time at Hogwarts. He didn't stop until hours later, when they were both forced to leave to attend dinner.

~§~

There was no other way, Harry decided. He'd spent weeks trying to find an alternative, but time was running out, and nothing else seemed to be working. It was almost too easy, in a way. Something illegal should be so easy. And yet, Harry was hard pressed to see any way in which it could go wrong. He still didn't like it, though.

It was now or never. Christmas Holidays were approaching, so if he didn't act now, he would have to wait until next year. And so, being as discreet as he could, he slipped a note into Malfoy's bag.

___D. Malfoy,_

___I have a proposition for you. If you're at all curious, meet me in the abandoned potion's lab on the fourth floor tonight after dinner. Come alone._

___H. Potter_

~§~

It was a stupid idea. There was no way he was going to show up. And even if he did, he'd probably bring a teacher with him, or something. It didn't matter, though. He hadn't done anything wrong... not yet, anyway.

"So, Potter, what's this about you propositioning me?"

Harry winced. He really should have seen that coming. He ignored the jab and cast a few spells on the room. When he turned to face the Slytherin, he couldn't help but laugh when he noticed the bond had his wand in hand, and had assumed a defensive duelling pose.

"Calm down, Malfoy, I'm just casting proximity and silencing charms."

"What's so important that I had to come all the way up here, Potter?"

"I have a favour to ask," replied Harry, trying not to wince.

"What kind of favour?"

"I need a book."

Malfoy regarded him for a moment before relying.

"I know you're spoiled, Potter, but getting someone else to buy your school books is a bit much, don't you think?"

Instead of replying, the Gryffindor just handed him a piece of parchment. Malfoy had the decency to look impressed.

"That's some awfully dark magic, Potter. Why on earth would the golden boy want something like that? More importantly, what makes you think I'd know where to find such a thing?"

"One of your old house elves is quite fond of me, Malfoy. He's told me quite a lot."

That was a lie, of course. Dobby hated talking about the Malfoy's, but Draco didn't know that. Said boy frowned.

"You still haven't answered the first question."

"Does it matter?"

The Slytherin decided to ignore the question.

"What makes you think I won't just tell a teacher, Potter? This kind of thing would easily get you expelled."

Harry smirked. He'd thought of that.

"Do you really think they would believe you, Malfoy? You've been spreading rumours about me going dark for nearly a year. They would dismiss you out of hand. And besides, you've said so yourself, Dumbledore would let me get away with anything. I'm the golden boy, remember?"

Harry did his best to imitate a Slytherin smirk. Based on the blond's reaction, it worked better than he'd expected.

"All right, Potter," Malfoy began, much more cautiously than before, "suppose, hypothetically, that I agreed to get this book for you. What would you do for me?"

"I can pay you?"

"Is that a question?"

"No. I can definitely pay you."

"I have enough money, Potter. Try something else."

"I can show you the chamber of secrets. The basilisk should still be down there. You could collect rare potion ingredients."

The thought of Malfoy having access to basilisk venom was rather alarming, but Harry didn't have much else to offer. He sure as hell wasn't giving the git his glasses or his invisibility cloak.

"Good start, Potter, but I'm going to need more than that. This book is probably incredibly rare, based on the publication date, and I could be sent to Azaban if I was caught."

"I don't have anything else, Malfoy."

"How about those glasses?"

"No deal."

"Really?"

"Yes, really. Pick something else."

Malfoy thought for a while before nodding.

"All right, how about this, you show me the basilisk and you'll owe me another favour, to be specified later."

"What kind of favour?"

"That's the point, Potter, it's to be specified later."

"I won't do anything that will harm anyone, bodily, emotionally, psychologically, financially, or otherwise."

Malfoy grit his teeth. "Fine."

"And I want the book after Christmas."

Malfoy was silent.

"Do we have a deal, Malfoy?" asked Harry, holding out his hand. The blond glared at him through narrowed eyes before quickly grasping his hand and saying: "Deal."

There was a bright white flash around them, accompanied by a slight burn in his palm.

"The fuck was that, Malfoy?!"

"Basic wizarding oath, Potter. Don't you know anything?"

Malfoy turned and left the room. Before he left, he hissed:

"And remember, Potter. You owe me."


	5. Chapter 5

If there was one thing that could be said of the Malfoy family, it's that they were incredibly good at smuggling dark items under the watchful eyes of others. They'd been doing so for years, after all. Nevertheless, Harry was impressed. He'd been opening Christmas presents with Ron when he found the letter. Five words, written in elegant cursive.

___Today. Same time, same place._

___-D.M._

As soon as he finished reading it, the letter vanished in a burst of flames.

"What the hell was that?" ask Ron.

"I'm not sure. It was blank," he lied.

Thankfully, Ron forgot the whole thing when Harry unwrapped his firebolt.

~§~

Hermione had reported the broom to McGonagall, but Harry could hardly bring himself to care. If the broom was cursed, they would probably be able to fix it and return it to him. If not, then they would return it to him anyway. He'd just have to be patient. And besides, he was more excited at the prospect of finding a banned book on core magic in the abandoned potions lab.

Sure enough, when he got there he spotted a parcel, wrapped in green christmas paper and addressed to him. Upon opening it, he found a copy of 'Simple spells for the spectacularly stupid' (he wondered if that was an actual book), but a quite ___finite incantatem_ revealed the true contents.

The book was old; there was no doubt about that. The cover, which Harry assumed must have been quite beautiful, was now a faded green-grey, with flecks of gold paint that might have been letter but were now too worn to read. The pages were yellowed and brittle, and a few had become detached from the binding. Harry resolved to look up some book maintenance charms as soon as possible. If it couldn't be salvaged, he could magically transcribe it to a blank notebook or diary. Most books had copy prevention charms on them, but considering that this book lacked basic maintenance charms Harry doubted that would be a problem.

On the off chance that someone might stop him in the hallway, Harry re-wrapped the book and slipped it in his bag.

~§~

"Hermione?"

"Yes?"

"Do you know where I could get runespoor eggs?"

"Any decent apothecary."

"Oh... how about lobalug venom?"

"Again, apothecary, but you'd need ministry permission for anything that toxic."

"Okay. What about-

"Harry?"

"Yeah?"

"You've been asking me where to get potion ingredients on and off for the past two days, and my answer has been the same every time. Why don't you just pick up a catalogue and owl-order whatever it is you want?"

"There are catalogues?"

"Yes, Harry."

___Of course there are catalogues, you moron_, Harry berated himself, ___Why didn't I think of that._

"Have I mentioned how much I love you, Hermione?" Harry teased.

"Oh, hush," she blushed, and, in an uncharacteristic moment of cheek, shot back, "I know you only like me for my body."

Ron, who'd been silent up till then, violently expelled his pumpkin juice through his nose.

"What do you need so many potion ingredients for, anyway?" she asked, pointedly ignoring the red-head. Apparently Ron hadn't forgiven her for reporting the firebolt, so they were no longer on speaking terms. He still sat with them in the great hall, but Harry suspected that was mostly because so few students had stayed for the holidays.

"I've been experimenting with potions to see if I can make them taste better."

It wasn't technically a lie, but that wasn't why he wanted those ingredients. Everything to do with core magic relied on rituals, which were a mix of spell casting and potions, with some ceremonial elements thrown in. He couldn't attempt any of them until he had the right ingredients.

"I have an excellent mint flavoured dreamless sleep potion, if you want to try." He added, just in case she didn't believe him. Hermione grimaced.

"I know you're getting better at potions, Harry, but I think I'll have to pass. The last time I had a student-made potion, I ended up looking like a cat."

~§~

The first day after the Christmas break, Malfoy approached Harry about seeing the chamber of secrets.

"So, Potty, anyone buy you some human sized clothes this christmas, or are you still rocking the broom-wrapped-in-a-blanket look?"

"Piss off, Malfoy" spat Ron. Harry silently wished his friend would think of something new to say.

"Aren't your friends going to by late for divination, Potter, or have they already realized that their future is filled with nothing but mediocrity and disappointment?"

Harry cast a quick ___tempus_, and realized the Slytherin was right.

"You guys go on. I'll be fine." He muttered. Hermione glared at Malfoy with suspicion.

"Harry, I don't think-

"I'll be fine, guys. I faced a basilisk and lived, remember? We'll meet up after class. If I'm not in the library, I'll find you guys at dinner."

"So," Malfoy asked after they'd gone, "when are you going to show me the chamber, dark lord Potter?"

Harry ignored the taunt. "Does now work?"

Malfoy nodded and followed him silently down the corridor. He didn't speak up until they were outside the girl's lavatory.

"Really, Potter? You expect me to believe that the chamber of secrets is in Myrtle's bathroom?"

"The basilisk killed Myrtle. It's how we found it."

"Reeeeally..."

"Yes."

Not waiting to see if Malfoy was going to follow, Harry walked into the bathroom and glanced around. Thankfully, its resident ghost was missing. He made his way to the broken sink, hissed a command, and watched with some satisfaction as the entrance of the chamber was revealed. In spite of the sinister nature of the chamber, Harry couldn't help but be reminded of the first time he saw the entrance to Diagon alley. Strange that something so dangerous could bring back such fond memories...

He glanced over his shoulder and saw Malfoy watching with wide eyes.

"Coming?"

The blond just nodded.

The chamber was just as dark and damp as Harry remembered. But now that there was no pressing sense of doom, he could take a moment to appreciate the architecture. Once you got over the obvious overabundance of snakes, it was quite nice. They finally came to a stop before the corpse of the basilisk.

"Listen, Potter, I know I've teased you about being the heir of Slytherin and everything, but, well..."

"Spit it out, Malfoy. We don't have all day."

___He's not apologizing, is he?_ Malfoy glanced nervously at his feet.

"You're not, right? I mean, I don't think you are. But with the whole dark magic thing, and what with you being a parselmouth, I thought that maybe... well..."

"You seriously want me to believe he didn't tell you?"

"What are you talking about, Potter?"

"Your father."

"What about him," Malfoy bristled.

"Malfoy, the chamber was opened because your father smuggled Voldemort's cursed diary into the school last year. I had nothing to do with it."

Malfoy chose to ignore him, puled a shrunken package from his pocket, and started setting up empty flasks. Harry, who'd taken to carrying all his experimental equipment around with him, followed suit.

"What are you doing, Potter?"

"I said you could harvest potion ingredients. I didn't say I wouldn't."

"Fine, but if you accidentally get stabbed by one of the fangs I'm not going to save you."

Harry made a show of pulling out his new gloves.

"Triple layered dragon hide gloves, Malfoy. They cover everything up to my shoulders."

"Seriously, Potter? You can afford antique goblin-forged glasses and potion-master grade field equipment, but you won't buy yourself a decent set of robes?"

"I'm a Gryffindor, Malfoy; I don't buy things unless they're useful."

"Robes are useful!" protested the blond.

"If you say so, Malfoy" dismissed Harry as he began removing scales from the surprisingly odourless corpse.

After nearly a half an hour of silently harvesting ingredients, Harry decided to ask the blond a question.

"Do you know how I can get lobalug venom without ministry permission?"

Malfoy stared at him incredulously.

"Do you pay attention at all in potions, Potter?"

"Um... yes?"

"Then why do you need lobalug venom?"

"Dark ritual."

"Yeah," replied the Slytherin, "I'd assumed as much. But you have basilisk venom, Potter."

"At the risk of sounding stupid: so?"

Malfoy pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration.

"Honestly, it's like I'm talking to a child. When venom is listed as an ingredient, they write the least toxic venom that will work. As long as you're not making an antidote or healing potion, you can substitute any stronger venom. Basilisk venom is one of the strongest venoms out there. That's one of the reasons it's so valuable."

"Oh..." Harry was sure that wasn't written in their potion textbook. He decided to change he subject. "So, what did your dad say when you told him I wanted to learn dark magic?"

"As if I'd tell him."

"Really?"

"Yes, Potter. My father would crucify me if he knew I so much as lent you a spare quill. So do me a favour and never mention it again."

"All right. Fair enough."

The continued gathering ingredients in silence, and didn't leave until all their jars and flasks were full.

~§~

The following months proved particularly frustrating for Harry. He'd ordered all the ingredients necessary for the rituals he wanted to perform, but hadn't yet mustered the courage to perform them. There were two of them: one that would allow him become consciously connected to his will and his magic, and another that would allow his magic to become like a muscle, growing stronger the more he used it.

The later was actually a set of three related rituals, each tied to one of the different magical hearts. Harry had learned that each heart was related to a different 'fundamental urge': attack, defence, and cooperation. (He'd laughed when he read this, as it seemed quite similar to the four f's of evolutionary biology: fighting, fleeing, feeding, and... reproduction.) Spells that projected the caster's will on the outside world relied primarily on the 'attack' heart, spells that fended off outside forces relied on 'defence', and spells that interacted with other magic relied on 'cooperation'. Of course, they could be mixed and matched to produce all sorts of intermediary effects, but most spells tended to rely more heavily on a single source.

Harry had been too nervous to risk doing anything dangerous, though. Black had been spotted in the castle once again, causing all the professors to pay close attention to Harry's activities. Lupin, in particular had been keeping a close eye on the young Gryffindor. Harry had cast a patronus during his last quidditch match and when asked about it later, he told people that Lupin had shown him the spell. It was technically true, and if people misinterpreted 'shown' as 'taught', that was their problem, right? But apparently word had reached the defence professor. Harry had confessed his linguistic trickery to Lupin, but the later didn't believe him when Harry told him he'd learned the spell by himself.

But now, with less than a month of classes left, Harry felt that he was running out of time. He wasn't sure he'd be able to smuggle his dark arts book out of school (or back in, for that matter), so he was planning to leave it in the chamber of secrets, along with the copy he'd magically transcribed. Waiting till next year to conduct the rituals seemed too long, so he decided to do them that night.

Harry gathered all the necessary equipment and travelled, under the cover of his invisibility cloak, down into Slytherin's chamber. With any luck, everything would go well and he would be back by sunrise. But just in case, he'd left a note for Ron asking him to cover for him if he was missing at breakfast.

Once in the chamber, Harry cleaned a large portion of the floor, and started drawing a set of concentric circles using a mixture of salt and ash. He'd brewed the four potions he would be using earlier, and placed them under a stasis charm. Grabbing the three required for the magic strengthening ritual, he sat cross legged in the circle and started muttering incantations while waving his wand in complex patters. Rationally, Harry suspected that this wasn't actually accomplishing anything, but he wasn't willing to risk it.

Of the two rituals, the magic strengthening one was the one with the less risk, and the fastest recovery time, so he decided to do that one first. The ritual to give him awareness of his magic would apparently knock him unconscious for a few hours while his body and brain rearranged themselves to allow for direct contact between his consciousness and his magical core. According to the book, he might also 'feel sore' afterwards. And if Harry's previous experience were any indication, when a wizard said "this might hurt", they really meant "this will be utter agony".

Having completed the first set of chants, Harry downed the 'attack' potion. The effect was immediate. His jaw seemed to relax and loosen slightly, as if he'd previously been clenching it. Drinking the 'defence' potion had an analogous effect on his chest, like he'd been released from a particularly tight hug. He blushed when the 'cooperation' potion resulted in a similar sensation in his groin. No appropriate similes sprang to mind.

Harry chanted the concluding incantation and then moved on to the second ritual.

In many ways, the final ritual was much simpler. He just needed to say five words, cut a heart-shaped gash in his chest using a gold knife, and then drink the potion. No complex wand movements. No long passages in latin.

With shaking hands, Harry brought the knife up to his chest. The blade was sharp enough that he hardly felt his skin being split apart. It was only the mild sting of the damp, dusty air on his cuts that let Harry know the knife had done its job. Well... that and the blood. There was quite a lot of blood.

Trying not to think about his self-inflicted injury, Harry downed the final potion and crumpled to the floor.


	6. Chapter 6

**A.N.: Thanks for all the lovely reviews! Hopefully this chapter will answer a lot of the questions you guys asked.**

**I wrote this chapter in an airport, and I'm not sure if I like it... some of the dialogue feels forced. I never really liked the plot of the third book, though, so I'm kinda glad it's (mostly) over.**

* * *

Everything hurt.

Harry could feel his heart straining to push blood through his aching limbs. He could feel the dusty air scraping at his lungs with every pained breath. He could feel his eyelids scraping across his cornea with each involuntary saccade. But above all, he could feel his magic coursing through three furiously beating hearts.

It seemed like hours before Harry could muster the will to sit up. The agony he'd felt before had subsided to a slow and heated ache. He still winced slightly at every movement, but it wasn't entirely incapacitating. Doing his best to ignore the pain, the young Gryffindor focused his attention on his magic.

Controlling his magic was odd, harry soon discovered. It wasn't like a limb, which could be moved precisely and with fine detail. Rather, it was like trying to redirect the flow of a stream. He had control of the general direction, and the intensity of the flow, but beyond that the motion seemed to be governed by its own momentum. After a few minutes of toying, he was relieved to find that he could direct his magic through his wand to cast spells if he needed to.

There was another presence, though; another new part of himself that he could now feel. It reminded him of the point of a knife. It felt sharp, in any case, and ready to slice through... something. Harry gave it a few experimental pushes and was pleased to discover that it was much easier to control. It felt like holding a quill, albeit one with a razor sharp point, and which darted around at incredible speeds. He couldn't see it through his glasses, though. Unlike his magic, it remained invisible.

Harry gave a tentative jab and was surprised to see a small gash appear, glowing in the same way his runes did when he cast a spell. But as soon as his attention wwavered, it vanished. He tried again, focusing on the palm of his hand, and carefully sliced a fire rune into whatever aether he was maiming. Then, taking care not to be too forceful, he directed some of his magic through the rune

He'd been expecting the result, but it was still immensely satisfying to see a flame wandlessly conjured into being. Harry grinned and tried again with a ___lumos_, and then a ___tempus_.

___Shit!_ It was six thirty in the morning. Some of the earlier risers would be up by now. Not wanting to spend any time on cleanup, Harry left his ritual materials scattered about the chamber and ran as fast as he could back to the Gryffindor common room, wincing all the way.

~§~

The problem with having conscious control over magic, Harry soon realized, was that it was incredibly difficult to let instincts take over. In many ways, it was like breathing. Most of the time, it came instinctively, but once your attention was drawn to it, it was very difficult to ignore. The problem, he discovered, was that his wand had its own kind of will. Most witches and wizards let their wands create runes for them, and had no direct control over the process. But now that Harry could influence his will directly, he inevitably did. If he wasn't careful he would occasionally screw up a rune, or direct his magic in the wrong place.

In retrospect, he really should have practiced a bit more before trying to cast spells in class. They had been working on transforming hedgehogs into pincushions when Harry's mind had drifted back to the wandless ___incendio _he had cast in the chamber of secrets. The hedgehog partially transfigured into a pincushion, and then caught fire. McGonagall had been furious, Hermione looked smug, and Malfoy seemed amused.

When Harry suffered a similar incident in charms, this time making his goblet of water boil rather than freeze, Hermione decided to "help".

"Harry, I know you've been casting spells wordlessly all year, but it's really important to get the incantation right before you try it wordlessly. I read about this last year. You're not supposed to cast silently until you can do it the normal way first."

He'd seen this coming. He wouldn't be surprised if she'd been waiting for him to mess up. Hermione would always be one to follow directions exactly, and was adamantly opposed to taking shortcuts. Never mind that he had been doing things successfully up till now. If the book said you had to use the incantation, then she would insist he use the incantation.

"Tell you what," he began, "if I'm still having problems by the end of the week, I'll think about it. I've been doing fine up till now, though. I'm not going to let a single mistake discourage me."

Hopefully the stubborn Gryffindor stereotype would work. It was certainly better than telling the truth, anyway.

She reluctantly nodded and returned to her own frost covered goblet.

~§~

By the end of day, Harry was itching to try new experiments. He could now directly control which runes he cast. Hopefully, that would let him figure out what each one did. Making sure he wasn't followed, he found an abandoned classroom and set up some basic protection spells and containment charms. If something went terribly wrong, he didn't want to get blown up by a spell that backfired. From what he'd read about spell creation, messing around with unknown magic could have fatal consequences.

Satisfied with his setup, he began testing various runes.

It was a bit like solving a code. He would start with a spell containing mostly known runes, and try to guess at the effects of the remaining ones. He could then mix and match them with other runes to see if they had the expected result. He ran experiment after experiment, noting potential translations for unknown runes as he found them, as well as recording the effects of various runic combinations. It was slow work, but he was sure it would pay off if he kept at it.

~§~

His first big breakthrough came a few days later when he was toying with ___accio_. The spell consisted of four runes, the last of which was the rune for 'mind'.

The first rune had been easy enough to decode. He cast it alone and was somewhat pleased to see everything in the room, including himself, be pulled towards the rune. The effect stopped after a certain range, but he found that he could increase the range by fuelling the spell with more magic. So the first rune was 'pull'. That was easy enough.

The thing about ___accio_, Harry realized, was that no object was specified in the spell itself. If you wanted to summon a quill, you used the same runes as if you wanted to summon a book. As far as he could tell, all that mattered was what you were thinking about at the time of casting.

And so, Harry guessed that the runes translated to 'pull-object-in-mind'.

Harry knew from his previous experiments that all transfiguration spells (with the exception of conjuring) took the same basic form: 'first object-to-second object'. If the spell worked on any object, then the first rune was a very useful one that Harry had recently discovered: 'target'. It was a rune that showed up in hundreds of spells, and was essentially a placeholder for "the thing on which you're casting the spell". He'd discovered that he could easily generalize transfigurations by replacing the first object with the 'target' rune. That way, it would work on everything.

But if the last three runes in ___accio_ were 'object-in-mind', then he'd discovered a universal transfiguration spell: 'target-to-object-in-mind'. It almost seemed too good to be true; all basic transfiguration reduced to a single spell.

Harry placed various objects within his containment charm, and tested his new spell. To his utter astonishment and delight, it worked every time. Some transfigurations would require more magic, or more concentration, but they always seemed to work. There were some limits, of course. He'd tried to turn a quill into a full-sized pipe organ, but realized that he was running out of magic very quickly and had to abort the transfiguration half way. But other than that, it worked.

Thank night, Harry left the classroom feeling more excited than he could ever remember.

~§~

___Why does this kind of thing always happen to me?_

Just when Harry thought he was going to end a year without having to face some sort of ridiculous challenge, fate had to rear its ugly head and trow this at him.

Harry, Ron, Hermione, Black, Lupin, and Snape had somehow managed to find themselves in the shrieking shack. Lupin was a werewolf, Black was apparently innocent, and Snape hated Harry because the marauders had nearly killed him. ___Why can't I have a normal year_, Harry continued to mentally whine. Meanwhile, Snape and Black were arguing.

"What's the matter, Black, aren't you going to finish the job?"

Snape had his wand pointed at the escaped convict, as if daring him to try.

"Snape, I swear on my honour as a Gryffindor-" Snape scoffed, "if you want to avenge Lily, you're pointing your wand at the wrong person!"

"How dare you even-

"I don't have time for this! I've waited twelve years for this, and I'm not going to be stopped because of your petty grudge!"

"Petty?! I nearly died you piece of-

"THAT RAT IS PETER PETTIGREW!"

Snape actually laughed. It wasn't much of one, more of an involuntary snort, but still not something Harry had ever expected to hear.

"You expect me to believe that?"

"Read my mind, if you want. I know you can." Black dropped his wand, "Go ahead. I'm unarmed."

Snape glanced at Lupin. The werewolf rolled his eyes and dropped his wand as well. Snape's eyes flickered to Black for a moment, and then he pointed his wand directly at Scabbers. With a loud pop, the rat reverted back to his human form.

The conversation that followed had been one of the most bizarre things Harry had ever witnessed. Ron was in shock, apparently unable to handle the idea of his pet being an escaped death eater. Hermione looked nearly as lost as Harry felt. Snape had very begrudgingly sided with Black and Lupin, even pausing to hand the werewolf a flask of Wolfsbane potion. Pettigrew, now fearing for his life, was scrambling around the room, desperately searching for an ally.

"Ron, you wouldn't betray me, would you? I've been a good pet, haven't I?"

Ron edged away nervously.

"And Severus, you wouldn't blame me, would you? You know what it's like. I know you do! To fear him. To make choices you'd regret for the rest of your life."

When Snape's face contorted in rage and disgust, the rat quickly backed off. His eyes finally settled on Harry. Faster than the young Gryffindor could react, the man latched himself onto him, sobbing profusely into his shoulder.

"You're so much like your father, Harry! So brave! You wouldn't let them kill me, would you?"

Harry felt the rat's chapped lips brush against his ear. Just as he was about to pull away in disgust, Pettigrew whispered:

"I know, Potter. Your deal with Malfoy. Your rituals in the chamber. Everything. Help me, or I'll tell them."

Harry's eyes widened in shock. ___No... nonononono..._

"You'll help me Potter, won't you?" Pettigrew was back to his fake sobbing.

Harry didn't respond.

"Won't you?"

___This can't be happening._

"Well, I guess it can't be helped."

Pettigrew turned to Snape.

"Fine. Arrest me if you want. Turn me in to the authorities. But know this..." He pointed to Harry, who now had a panicked look on his face, "The only dark wizard in this room is-

Harry reflexively cast a wandless stunner at Pettigrew, but it was too late. Everyone was staring at him. The fact that he hadn't raised his wand probably wasn't doing anything to ease their suspicion.

"Care to tell us what he was about to say, Potter?" asked Snape, his wand now pointed towards the boy.

"Um... I don't know. I mean he's obviously desperate. Why else would he-

Snape didn't let him finish.

"Legilimens."

Harry's encounter with Malfoy flashed through his mind, followed quickly by his rituals in the chamber. Apparently Black had been right when he said Snape could read minds.

"Well," drawled Snape, "it seems as if the golden boy has some very illegal hobbies."

"What are you talking about, Snape?" demanded Lupin, "You can't possibly be suggesting that Harry's been-

"Doing dark rituals down in the chamber of secrets while his friends slept peacefully in their little tower? Yes. Yes I am."

"Snape, I don't care if you hate me, but if you think you can get away with accusing my godson of being a dark wizard and get away with it, I promise you you're wrong."

Snape smirked triumphantly.

"There's an easy way to check. We could ask him under veritaserum. Or we could ask Pettigrew under veritaserum when he's put on trial. You do want to see him on trial, don't you, Black?"

The later turned to Harry.

"Harry," Black licked his lips nervously, "tell me he's not serious."

He couldn't move. Somehow, it had never crossed his mind that someone might find out; that someone might tell his friends, and his teachers. He knew the penalty for practicing dark rituals. It earned you a one way ticket to Azkaban. ___This isn't happening... tell me this isn't happening._

"Harry?" it was Ron this time. "Please say something..." He sounded frightened.

Harry turned to his friend, and felt his heart break by what he say. Ron was slowly crawling backwards, wordlessly conveying a mix of fear and betrayal. Hermione wasn't much better. She seemed disgusted and horrified. He turned back to face the adults just in time to see Black's face fall.

"No. Oh, fuck, no... Harry, please say something."

"I... I just..."

What could he say? There was nothing. Nothing could make this better.

"I'm so sorry."

~§~

The walk to the headmaster's office was easily the most terrifying thing Harry had ever done. Basilisks and dark lords seemed easy by comparisons. Lupin lead the way, followed by a dog-shaped Sirius and then the golden trio. Snape was at the rear, levitating an unconscious Pettigrew in front of him. By the time they made it to the stone gargoyle, Ron and Hermione had shifted away from Harry and seemed to be using the adults as a kind of shield. That alone hurt more than he had expected. Harry absently noticed Lupin excuse himself, muttering something about the moon.

Dumbledore's office was just as Harry remembered it. Silver devices of all shapes and sized lined the curved walls, puffing and spinning and whistling gently in the background. But whereas the office had once felt welcoming and wondrous, it now just felt intimidating. Snape had calmly recounted the entire encounter to Dumbledore, who was now staring at Harry in silence. The boy had been surprised by Snape's impartiality. He'd recounted the story exactly as it had happened, without even bothering to insult Black or Harry. Then again, he hardly needed to.

"Harry, my boy," Dumbledore spoke at last, "why would you do such a thing?"

"I-" his words died in his throat. He had to think carefully about what he was going to say. "I wanted to learn wandless magic," he began. The truth would probably help here. "I've been trying to figure out how spell casting works. Everything I read made it seem like wands were doing most of the work. Being able to cast spells without knowing what the runes did, or even knowing what runes you were using... it felt like cheating."

Dumbledore visibly relaxed. Harry wasn't quite sure what part of his confession had elicited such a response, but he was glad it had worked.

"Ah, the curiosity of youth..." the headmaster sighed, "while I can sympathize with your reasons Harry, I must make it absolutely clear that this kind of behaviour will not be tolerated in future. These practices are illegal for a reason. If you ever find yourself itching to push the boundaries of magic, I want you to come see me. I may not be able to provide the same instant gratification as dark magic, but all the same..." With a flick of his wand, the Dumbledore summoned a red leather-bound book from his private library before continuing. "I know a thing or two about advanced magic. Hopefully we can direct that curiosity towards something a little more healthy."

He handed the book, 'A Complete Introduction to Alchemy', to Harry.

"If I might interject," grumbled Snape, "I must object headmaster. This is a crime punishable by life in Azkaban. You cannot possibly let him off so easily! He should, at the very least, be expelled."

The headmaster sighed.

"Miss Granger. Mr. Weasley. If you could head back to your dormitory? This is not a conversation for your ears, I'm afraid. I trust neither of you will mention this to anyone?"

They nodded, far too eagerly for Harry's taste, and quickly left the room.

"Now," he continued, turning to Snape, "You know full well, Severus, that we can't do that. Harry's situation is unique, as I'm sure you remember. And you'll recall that he is hardly the first Hogwarts resident to be forgiven for such crimes."

Snape clenched his jaw, but said nothing.

"Where is your book, Harry?" asked Dumbledore.

"In the chamber of secrets, sir."

"Fawkes, if you would?"

The phoenix vanished in a flash of golden flames, only to reappear moments later holding the dark tome in it's claws. Harry couldn't help but feel slightly pleased that it had left his transcribed copy behind. Dumbledore leafed through the book.

"Which of these have you performed, Harry? Some of these can have dangerous long term consequences if performed incorrectly."

"Pages fifty-seven, and a hundred and eight, sir."

"Just two?"

"Yes, sir."

The headmaster quickly read through the relevant pages.

"I must compliment you on your restraint, my boy. I'm sure many of these must have been tempting."

"Not really, sir."

"Oh?" The headmaster raised his brow in surprise.

"I had a very specific goal in mind, sir." Harry explained.

Dumbledore smiled and turned to Snape.

"You see, Severus? Means to an end. Nothing more than misguided academic curiosity." He turned back to Harry, "Nevertheless, my boy, I will have to keep this from you. However you managed to get your hands on such a book, I must insist that you avoid doing so in future. If you are found in possession of such things in future, I will not be so lenient."

"Headmaster," Black spoke for the first time since arriving, "what about Peter. He'll hardly keep his mouth shut, and he's bound to be questioned under veritaserum."

The older wizard frowned.

"Yes, that is unfortunate." He paused in thought. "There is only one thing to do, I'm afraid. I hate to resport to this, but those memories will have to be obliviated."

Harry was shocked they were going to such lengths to protect him. ___I must be missing something, _he though. ___There's no way they would do this for any other student._

"Now, Harry. I think we've kept you up long enough." Dumbledore said, rising to his feet. "I will have to deduct point... two hundred, I think."

Harry nodded.

"Very well. Off you go."

When he returned to the Gryffindor common room, Ron refused to acknowledge his presence. Harry knew that the last few days of term were going to be hellish, especially when his housemates found out about all the points he'd lost them. But in that moment, he couldn't bring himself to care. It felt as if he'd gotten away with murder.

With a shuddering sigh of relief, Harry downed a dreamless sleep potion and fell into bed.


	7. Chapter 7

**A.N.: Some of you seem quite eager to get to the new school, so I'm going to try to get through fourth year as quickly as possible.**

* * *

Contrary to his expectations, Harry found the rest of the school year to be quite relaxed. Ron and Hermione had decided to ignore him completely. At first, it had hurt to see them be so distant, but he soon discovered that he quite enjoyed being alone, now. Without anyone to remind him of that night, it was easy to forget it ever happened and lose himself in his work. He dedicated more and more time to translating runes (though none of his discoveries were as useful as his universal transfiguration spell.)

His fellow students speculated wildly about what he'd done to lose so many house points, but he'd grown used to that sort of thing. He'd already suffered through months of ridiculous rumours, and was now quite good at ignoring them. Ron had let slip that "Malfoy's rumours weren't all that far off from the truth", but apart from that, he and Hermione remained silent. What did surprise him, though, was the reaction from Slytherin. It seemed his dabbling in dark arts had earned their collective respect, even if it hadn't ever been proved. Some of them had even started to greet him politely when they passed in each other in hallways.

Eventually, the school year came to an end and Harry was forced to return to the Dursleys. There, he fell into his previous routine, and spent most of his time in the library. He'd worked through the alchemy book Dumbledore had given him. The subject, while superficially similar to transfiguration, was in fact more akin to potions and rituals. The main difference was in the target. Potions were generally meant to be taken by a person. Alchemy, on the other hand, was used on inanimate objects. A good alchemist could brew a solution to turn stone into glass, make a fabric puncture-proof, or create a temporary invisibility cloak.

Harry was itching to try it, but he didn't want to tempt fate by performing magic outside of school. Instead, he settled on learning more muggle science. Alchemy reminded him of chemistry, so he decided to read up on that. Muggles, he discovered, had created some fascinating substances. Carbon nano-tubes and graphene in particular seemed amazing, so Harry planned to transfigure some when he returned to Hogwarts.

He still struggled to understand most of the material he found in science textbooks. A lot of it was at university level, and he was still in his early teens. Nevertheless, he kept reading. He briefly toyed with the idea of using magic to make him more intelligent, but that would probably be classified as dark. Not for the first time, Harry winced as he recalled his actions earlier that year. In hindsight, he had been remarkably stupid. He compiled a list of things he would need to do in order to avoid getting caught like that again.

___-Learn how to protect my mind_

___-Learn a spell to know when people are watching me and/or modify a muggle repelling charm to work on everyone_

___-Find a way to gather books and supplies without getting caught_

___-Find a new place to do experiments (Dumbledore might be watching the chamber of secrets)_

___-Find new friends_

The last one probably wouldn't keep him out of trouble, but if he was going to make a to-do list, he might as well include that. Neither Ron nor Hermione had mailed him all summer, so he doubted they were going to forgive him for the dark magic incident. A part of him was relieved. Hermione had a completely different attitude towards magic than Harry. Whereas he loved experimenting, she would always insist on doing things by the book. He'd hoped that she might be able to provide some intelligent conversation, but whenever they got into an interesting debate, she appealed to authority and refused to listen to anything that contradicted her books. Ron had been getting on his nerves for a different reason. The redhead had been complaining constantly that Harry was studying too much. It also didn't help that his repertoire of insults seemed to consist of calling someone Slytherin or gay.

If he was honest, neither of those things seemed all that bad to Harry. A year ago, he might have thought that Slytherins were a bunch of rule breaking gits, but now he had to admit that the whole 'ambitious and cunning' thing had some merit. He knew that many of them practiced dark magic, but he'd never heard of any of them getting caught. Rumour had it they regularly smuggled alcohol into their house parties, but again, they had never been caught. He couldn't help but admire them, and a part of him was hoping they would still be friendly when he returned next year. He had a feeling he could learn a lot from them.

As for being gay, that something else that had been bothering Harry recently. He hadn't really given it much thought before, but now that he started, he found that he couldn't really get it out of his mind. He had, in a moment of curiosity, skimmed through a book on human sexuality. In the five minutes it took to read the preface, Harry learned more about the subject than he had over the course of the past thirteen years combined. And, now that he considered it, being gay really didn't seem that bad. In fact, it seemed rather... well... good.

He couldn't honestly say that he'd ever found girls particularly attractive. His housemates would occasionally make lewd comments about someone's breasts, or curvaceous figure, but Harry just found them to be in poor taste and generally off-putting. As far as he was concerned, a girl's breasts were no more interesting than her elbows, and paying any significant amount of attention to them seemed like a rather curious way to waste time. And so, Harry had started wondering if he was gay. The more he thought about it, the more obvious it became that he definitely was.

So if Ron was going to hate him for being a gay, borderline Slytherin who had a history with dark magic, then Harry was just going to have to find better friends.

~§~

Summer seemed to go by much more quickly than ever before. Without the constant chores and endless insults from the Dursleys, it was almost enjoyable. As usual, Harry hadn't had much contact with the rest of the wizarding world. None of his friends had replied to his letters, but he had enjoyed a lengthy correspondence of Sirius. Every few days, Harry would receive updates on his trial, his encounters with mind-healers, the perpetual harassment from reporters. Each letter would end with a question about Harry's childhood, or his hobbies, or his favourite school subjects. Black, it seemed, was intent on becoming a larger part of Harry's life. He'd even suggested that Harry come live with him after the trial was over.

To say that Harry was overjoyed would be an understatement. He'd always wanted a family, and Sirius was about as close to having a family as he was likely to get. And so Harry told him everything. He told him about the time he met Hagrid on a small island in the middle of a storm, about the first time he rode a broom, about saving the philosopher's stone, and fighting the basilisk. In turn, Sirius would tell him about the pranks he pulled in Hogwarts, being disowned by his family, or learning to become an animagus.

Soon enough, it was time for Harry to go buy his school supplies and star the new year. Without the Weasley's to come pick him up, Harry hadn't been sure how he would make it to the alley. Thankfully, Sirius was able to help, even if his trial was keeping him from coming in person. And so, following his godfather's instructions, Harry stood on the side of the road and held up his wand, summoning the knight bus.

The ride was easily one of the most enjoyable trips Harry had ever taken. Seeing Vernon's face flush with rage upon seeing the strange vehicle show up in front of his house had been particularly satisfying. Nevertheless, he was glad when he got off and re-entered Diagon alley.

Harry was quite eager to do his shopping. All summer, he had been planning what to buy in order to begin trying alchemy and to continue his efforts to translate runes. Simple containment charms, he'd decided, weren't good enough. He'd been lucky so far that none of his experiments had backfired too violently (sure, there had been a few minor explosions when he'd been toying with ___bombarda_, but nothing to serious) but he didn't want to count on luck alone.

With some direction from the shop assistant, he purchased a books on warding and curse breaking, both of which would help keep his experiments safe and, hopefully, unnoticed. He also bought a book on occlumency, a followup text on alchemy, and a spell encyclopedia.

At the apothecary, he restocked his portable potion lab, and purchased additional equipment to expand it into a makeshift alchemy lab. The shop keeper seemed quite eager to see some of the equipment go. There wasn't much of a market for alchemy these days, apparently. Most witches and wizards were quite satisfied to use charms and transfiguration. Alchemy, while more powerful, wasn't nearly as practical for day to day use.

He made a final stop at the leaky cauldron, where he purchased a light lunch and the latest copy of the ___Prophet_. A lot had been going on, apparently. Sirius was on the cover, as expected, but he wasn't the feature story. It seemed that there had been an attack at the quidditch world cup, and that the dark mark had been seen for the first time in years. Harry absently wondered if this was going to mark the beginning of another ridiculously eventful school year.

~§~

He should have expected it, really, being alone on the Hogwarts express. He'd arrived quite early, but no one sat with him. Occasionally someone would peek through the compartment window, but they would quickly dart away once they saw who was inside. Harry didn't mind too much. It gave him a chance to crack open his new books. He really wanted to master occlumency as quickly as possible. Fortunately, it seemed that the process would be simplified immensely thanks to the rituals he'd performed the previous year.

He'd managed to get through three chapters before he was finally interrupted.

"So, Potty," drawled Malfoy as he fell gracefully into the seat opposite him, "Have a nice summer?"

"It was ok. Got lots of reading done." Harry had resolved not to be the first to throw stones. As long as Malfoy didn't outright insult him, he saw no reason to pick a fight.

"Didn't get to see the world cup?"

"Nope. I have rather limited travel options, you know. Living with muggles who hate magic somewhat limits my access to such things."

Malfoy regarded him silently for a moment. Harry fought back a smug smile. Clearly, the blond hadn't been expecting small talk.

"Well," the Slytherin finally replied, "I was there, naturally. Best seats in the house. Shame you weren't there; the after party was a blast."

"So I read... Nice to see old friends, I take it?"

"Quite..."

Harry absently flicked a page of his book. This whole don't-piss-off-Malfoy thing was going better than expected.

"You know, Potter, everyone in Slytherin will have heard by now. You got caught, and as much as your beloved headmaster might try to cover it up, his jurisdiction ends outside of Hogwarts."

"You let my little discrepancies slip, did you?"

"I didn't have to," said the blond, leaning back in triumph, "Our favourite potions professor was all too eager to tell everyone about it."

Harry clenched his jaw in irritation. Again, he'd expected as much, but it still bothered him.

"And no one suspects you had any part in the whole thing, I take it? Snape wouldn't want his favourite pupil's reputation tarnished? He certainly kept that little fact from Dumbledore."

"Ah, well, it's not that big of a deal, really," Malfoy dismissed with a wave of his hand, "If anything, I would be congratulated for corrupting the boy-who-lived. But that's not the real issue. What matters here is that some of my housemates think you're going dark, and are going to be eagerly trying to help you along."

The Slytherin leaned forward, his eyes glinting mischievously.

"I thought I should warn you that not all of them will be as discreet as you'd like them to be, Potter. I'd avoid smuggling books into school unless you know they can be trusted to deliver."

As an afterthought, he added, "And there's no quidditch this year, by the way. Hogwarts is hosting the triwizard tournament."

Harry couldn't help be gape.

"Any reason you're being so helpful, Malfoy? If I didn't know any better, I'd think you actually liked me or something."

The blond sneered and stood up. "Don't flatter yourself, Potter." He reached for the door. "I just don't like sharing my toys."

~§~

Word had reached more than just the Slytherins. No one at the Gryffindor table wanted to sit next to him. It was almost comical in a way, how they crammed close together in order to avoid him. Harry tried to look on the bright side; at least he had plenty of room to read while he ate. It was almost like having his own private table.

Sure enough, Dumbledore announced that Hogwarts would be hosting the tournament, though he cautioned anyone too young from entering. Previous tournaments had been dangerous to the point of fatality. Harry had had quite enough danger in the last few years, so he was honestly quite relieved.

He also introduced their new defence professor, Mad-Eye Moody. Harry was disappointed to see Remus go, but word had escaped that he was a werewolf, and some parents had complained. Nevertheless, a battle-hardened ex-Auror would probably be just as good. Better than second year, in any case.

~§~

In the weeks that followed, Harry discovered that, though everyone in Gryffindor now avoided him like the plague, the same wasn't true for the other houses. He'd had quite a few Hufflepuffs approach him in the library to tell him that they didn't believe the rumours, and that Gryffindors were acting like gits, and he was welcome to join them any time he liked. A few Ravenclaws had approached him as well, though they were mostly just curious.

"What's it like in the chamber of secrets?" A young Ravenclaw girl had asked him, seemingly from out of the blue.

"Well..." Harry knew that by answering he wouldn't be helping the heir-of-Slytherin rumours, but telling her to piss off seemed a little rude. "It's mostly really dark, damp, and dusty. Everything's made of stone, the walls are covered in carvings of snakes, and there are rat skeletons scattered all over the place. It's not very nice."

She looked disappointed.

"Are you sure? I heard there was a throne carved out of pure silver, and fountains that poured thousand year old wine."

"Um... no. I think I would have noticed that."

"Oh... Well, yes, I suppose you would have. Thanks."

Harry shrugged in amusement as she walked away.

The most drastic change had come from the Slytherins, however. Continuing from last year, they would nod to him in hallways, offer to reach high shelves in the library (damn his diminutive stature), or even lend him quills when his broke. In potions, a rather gaunt looking boy by the name of Zabini offered to be his potions partner, but Malfoy had stepped in and not-so-politely suggested he find someone else, as Harry was apparently going to be his partner. The overwhelmed Gryffindor had to suppress a laugh. Malfoy acted like some sort of jealous lover, Zabini looked both embarrasses and affronted, and Snape was visibly trembling in anger.

___This, _Harry decided, ___is going to be much more interesting than I thought._


	8. Chapter 8

**A.N.: A few people seem to think that Voldemort would want to be allied with Harry now that he's supposedly going dark. Really? You think so? Voldemort fears death more than anything, and he believes there's a prophecy saying Harry is destined to kill him. Do you reeeeally think he would have a sudden change of heart? For all he knows, Harry could be destined to become a rival dark lord. I mean, I know it's a fairly common occurrence in fanfics, but I honestly don't think it makes much sense.**

**Long story short, Voldemort still wants to kill Harry.**

**Also, I have no intention of pairing Draco with Harry. It might look like it from time to time, but it's probably not going to happen.**

**Finally (and I can't believe I have to say this), THIS STORY IS SLASH! Read the description! Read the first author note! If you're surprised that Harry's gay in this fic, you really should pay more attention.**

**Anyway, thanks for all the lovely reviews last chapter. Your enthusiasm keeps me motivated :)**

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Their first defence against the dark arts class was not quite what Harry had been expecting. He'd heard people whispering about Moody's teaching style and personality, but he assumed they were exaggerations. Not so. Apparently the stereotype of a paranoid ex-cop with nothing left to lose held more merit than he'd assumed.

It had been interesting, to say the least. Harry certainly hadn't been expecting a demonstration of the unforgivables. He watched in fascination as the runes for each were conjured into being. He didn't dare write any of them down, in case someone recognized them, but then, he doubted he would ever need to use them.

___Imperio_ used so many runes, packed so closely together, that Harry doubted he could have transcribed it if he tried. While most students were busy watching a spider tap-dancing along a desk, he was trying to make sense of the spell. The 'mind' rune showed up a lot, unsurprisingly, but apart from that, Harry found himself hard pressed to identify any of the others. There were a few identifiable parts of speech, 'in', 'while', 'for each', but most of the verbs and nouns remained a mystery.

___Crucio_, Harry was surprised to discover, consisted of a single rune: 'pain'. In a moment of panic, he remembered where he'd seen it before. Last year, he had discovered the rune while dissecting the stinging hex. What worried him was that he had cast the spell on a mouse he'd summoned. He'd cast an unforgivable. In the castle. ___I really need to master occlumency,_ he decided.

Moody had noticed the panic looked, but misinterpreted it entirely.

"Not a pretty sight, is it, Potter?"

Harry gulped, "No, sir."

"A favourite of death eaters and other dark wizards, this one. You know why, boy?"

"No, sir."

"No?"

Harry was acutely aware that everyone in the class was staring at him.

"No, sir. I could hazard a guess, but it wouldn't be any more than that."

The whole room seemed to be holding its breath, waiting for Moody's response. The only sound to be heard was the frantic scratching of the spider's legs against the desk. Finally, he nodded jerkily and released the spider from its plight.

"I don't suppose it would be, Potter. No decent wizard could know what goes on in their twisted minds."

Harry released a breath he hadn't realized he was holding, and Moody moved on to the next unforgivable as if the exchange had never happened.

___Avada kedavra_ was a similarly short spell. Not quite as short as ___crucio_, but short enough that Harry was able to memorize it after seeing it once. It consisted of four runes, three of which he knew. 'remove-?-from-target'. Harry had a few guesses as to what the remaining rune was, 'life' and 'soul' being the most likely. He had absolutely no intention of testing that particular hypothesis, though.

~§~

Moody's lectures would continue to be a source of nerve-wracking entertainment. Their lessons mainly consisted of students being put under the imperius curse one after another in the hopes that some of them might learn to resist it. Thus far, only Harry had done so. He suspected it had something to do with the fact that he had some experience with occlumency, but he couldn't really know for sure. He still remembered the expression of reluctant respect Moody had worn when he'd calmly ignored the insistent voice in the back of his mind.

Their other courses had started to pick up as well. All the professors seemed to agree that with O.W.L.s "right around the corner", it was time to be more demanding. Harry hardly noticed. Charms and defence came easily to him, and transfiguration was trivial now that he could literally accomplish everything with a single spell. He was quite good at potions and herbology, since both were required to do well in alchemy. He suspected he knew more about runes than any other living wizard, astronomy was easy once you knew a little muggle science, and history of magic never involved anything more than memorization. The only course that noticeably changed was arithmancy, and even then, Harry could easily keep up.

All of this, however, was overshadowed by the announcement that the students from other schools would be arriving. Throughout the day, Harry heard snippets of conversation from people blindly speculating about who would be competing, telling each other about relatives who studied at Beauxbatons and Durmstrang, and sharing any other tournament related news, no matter how mundane. Once classes ended, all the students lined up in front of the castle, eagerly awaiting the arrival of their guests.

Beauxbatons were the first to arrive, descending dramatically from the sky in a massive horse-drawn carriage. Their headmistress easily captured the attention of most of his housemates, but Harry was more interested in the students. They stood in three rows, looking calm and professional. Unlike the Hogwarts students, they wore blue robes that appeared to have been made of something resembling silk. Harry absently wondered if they had a house system as well. None of them wore any distinguishing marks, but he could tell from body language that there were at least two distinct groups within the party.

His speculations were cut short by the arrival of Durmstrang's group. While Beauxbaton's entrance had been dramatic, the Russian school's was bordering on the impossible. Harry knew for a fact that the Hogwatrs wards would normally prevent any and all magical transport, yet Durmstrang's boat bust forth from the lake. It was only thanks to his glasses that Harry noticed Dumbledore discreetly fiddling with his wand. The amount of magic pouring into his spell was astounding. Around the lake, a massive glowing sphere was pushing away the wards, which themselves appeared as a light mist, shimmering more strongly the more the sphere pushed against them. When the boat finally settled on the lake, Dumbledore released his spell, and the mist swooped in to fill the void.

The dynamics within the Durmstrang students were much easier to analyze. Everyone seemed to tiptoe around Krum. If the quidditch start didn't end up being the Durmsgtrang champion, Harry would be very surprised. He didn't see what the fuss was about, though. Compared to his classmates, his magical core was somewhat below average in size and activity. He could only assume that the gruff looking male made up for it with experience or daring.

With the theatrics out of the way, everyone made their way into the great hall. There, Dumbledore presented the goblet of fire, and warned everyone about the age line that would prevent younger students from applying. Everything said after that point was lost on Harry. He was far too busy marvelling at the runes around the goblet.

The last time he'd seen something as intricately enchanted was Hermione's time-turner from last year. (He'd read a reference to them in his spell encyclopedia and immediately made the connection. There weren't very many ways someone could be in two places at once, after all.) Unlike the necklace, however, the goblet's runes existed in several sets of interlocking rings. Unfortunately, it was impossible to read the runes from such a distance.

Harry decided to spend some time tomorrow examining the cup up close. He might not be able to cross the age line, but he could easily get close enough to transcribe the runes. Perhaps he could find a way to recreate some of the enchantments and discover the effects of arranging runes in a closed loop. For now, though, he was happy to enjoy the relative lack of attention he was getting.

~§~

"Harry Potter?"

Harry dropped his fork.

___Fuck! No no no nonono!_

The three champions had been chosen, all the attention was away from him, and Harry was ready to enjoy the feast in peace. But no, fate had to go and throw this at him.

"Harry?" Dumbledore called again.

He huffed, stood up, and made his way to the front of the hall, ranting under his breath.

"Every fucking year. For once, just once, I'd like to have a normal term. But noooo! It just has to be me, doesn't it?"

He reached a grim looking Dumbledore who quickly ushered him away from the hall to where the other champions had gathered. An excited man, whom Harry had seen introduced but didn't really remember, followed them.

"Amazing... simply astounding!" the fidgety man exclaimed as they approached the others, "A fourth champion has been chosen!"

No one else seemed very excited.

"C'n'est pas possible! Un quatrième? A fourth?! Ze rules do not allow for zis!"

"I have to agree with Madame Maxime," growled Karkaroff, "This is the ___tri_wizard tournament, is it not?"

"I can't say I'm surprised", drawled Snape, "Potter has a remarkable ability to get himself into trouble. That he found a way to get past the age line is to be expected, at this point."

Harry opened his mouth to contradict him, but Dumbledore cut him off.

"Did you put your name in the goblet, Harry?"

"No! Of course not!"

"And why should we believe him?" asked Cedric.

Harry glared at him.

"Because," he hissed through clenched teeth, "I have nothing to gain and everything to lose."

"Nothing to gain?!" exclaimed the excitable ministry employee, "There's adventure, excitement, fame, and fortune! Your name in lights!"

"Oh, of course!" Harry drawled, trying to imbue as much sarcasm as he could in every word, "That's exactly what my life has been lacking up till now, don't you think?"

The mad had the decency to blush.

"I'm afraid it matters little," sighed Dumbledore, "Having your name chosen by the goblet is a binding magical contract."

With those words, all hope that Harry had of getting out of competing left him.

~§~

By the next day, the school had become divided in their support. Most of the student body supported Cedric, who they insisted was the real Hogwarts champion. Harry had somehow managed to gain the support of the 'dark' portion of the student body. To his great surprise, and even greater annoyance, he had gained the moniker 'Slytherin's champion', apparently in reference to his rumoured status as heir of Slytherin.

Harry tried to ignore it, and spent every free moment locked away in abandoned classrooms practicing alchemy or translating runes. However, as much as he tried, he couldn't help but overhear the not-quite-whispered conversations his classmates had during class or at meal times. He'd been in potion, listening to a particularly aggravating discussion about whether or not he could win by petrifying the competition when Colin Creevey appeared.

"Excuse me, sir?"

"What."

"I'm here to collect Harry, sir. They're going to perform the wand weighing ceremony."

Snape looked as relieved as Harry felt. Neither of them, it seemed, enjoyed being in the same room.

"Very well. You may go, Potter."

Colin lead him upstairs, chatting all the way about some photography related story that Harry couldn't be bothered to follow. Eventually, they stopped in front of the ministry employee whom Harry now recognized as Ludo Bagman.

"Ah! Harry! Our fourth champion! We'll be weighing your wand shortly. It's just upstairs. I believe Miss Skeeter here wanted to have a word first, though. She's a reporter for the ___Prophet_! I'm sure you don't mind, do you?"

Harry did mind, but he had a feeling that declining would only result in more trouble, so he agreed to go. They'd hardly rounded the corner before Rita Skeeter began questioning him.

"So, Harry. You don't mind if I call you Harry, do you? Oh good. Must be very exciting, being chosen as champion. What made you decide to put your name in the cup?"

Harry frowned. ___Not off to a good start._

"I didn't put my name int he cup. I was looking forward to enjoying the tournament from a safe distance, along with the rest of my classmates."

"Really? I was told you were quite fond of adventure."

"I don't seek it out, if that's what you're implying. Although..." Harry's mind drifted back to Snape's various comments, "I know some people seem to be under that impression."

"Some people as in Gryffindors? I couldn't help but notice that there seems to be a bit of a divide between you and the rest of your house."

"I suppose that's true... A lot of them believe some rather nasty rumours about me."

"Rumours about you being dark, you mean?"

Skeeters eyes were gleaming predatorily.

"Yes, among other things," Harry ventured, trying to choose his words carefully, "It's nonsense, of course. There isn't a shred of evidence for any of it."

"Of course," she dismissed, "So, how are you feeling about the first task? Excited? Nervous?"

"I'm trying not to think about it too much, to be honest."

"Really? You're not trying to prepare?"

"How could I possibly prepare? I have no idea what the task will be."

"Even so, you could-

"Harry?"

Dumbledore was calling.

"I have to go, sorry." Harry said, eager to get away, "It was nice talking to you" he added, even though nothing could be further from the truth.

~§~

Rita Skeeter, it seemed, had little respect for the truth. Harry re-read the article for the fourth time that morning.

___The most interesting champion, however, is without a doubt the famous Harry Potter. Reader will be shocked to learn that the young Gryffindor, whom many have championed as a saviour, may be anything but._

___"We've known since second year," confessed one of his housemates, "Back when the chamber of secrets was opened. Everyone knew it was him, but no one could prove it. I heard he petrified one of his friends to avoid suspicion, but it didn't work. They're not friends anymore, obviously. I don't think he has any friends left in Gryffindor."_

___When confronted with these accusations, the boy-who-lived had this to say:_

___"Ah, yes... They do believe some rather nasty things about me, don't they?" And then, with a grin, added, "None of it has ever been proven, of course."_

___Reports of the fallen saviour having no light-leaning friends appear to be accurate. The boy is reputed to spend the majority of his time alone, locked in abandoned classrooms, practicing alchemy and experimental magic. (Readers will of course remember that experimenting with spell creation is illegal without a ministry license.)_

___When asked, the minister had the following to say:_

___"We are, of course, very concerned with young Harry's behaviour. He is already on probation after having been caught practicing magic in front of muggles. These recent accusations are being taken very seriously."_

___He concluded by reminding us that Harry's fame did not grant him immunity from the law._

___None of this seems to faze the Potter heir, however. When asked if he was at all nervous about the upcoming challenges, he dismissed all concerns, stating that he didn't see the need to prepare._

___It remains to be seen if such naive confidence will serve him well._

~§~

If the school had been divided before, it was now in a state of outright war. Students had started wearing badges to declare their allegiances to either champion, and more than a few had ended up in the hospital wing over disputes relating to Harry's participation in the tournament.

Slytherin had united behind him. And although this only cemented his reputation, it did have one notable benefit: vicarious cheating. More than one student had approached Harry to let him know that the first task would involve dragons. Slytherin students, it seemed, were prone to wander through the forbidden forest. He'd been doubtful at first, but after multiple reports he decided he should believe them. After all, it was the only real lead he had.

And so, Harry started studying dragons. Most of the information was quite discouraging. It seemed that there were only a handful of reliable ways to take down a fully grown dragon, and most of them required many hands. There was a consistent theme, though. Dragons had two weak points: their eyes, and the inside of their mouths. Everything else was covered in spell resistant scales.

It took a week of study, an owl-ordered book on alchemy, and an extremely complex potion before Harry was satisfied with his plan. Laid out on the desk in front of him was a vibrant scarlet cloak. He'd left it soaking overnight in an alchemic solution, and was quite pleased with the results. With any luck, the cloak would now be impervious to all forms of fire, magical or otherwise. Moreover, any magic in the flames that touched it would be absorbed by the wearer, allowing them to cast more powerful spells. The enchantment only lasted a week, but the first task was tomorrow.

Harry put on the cloak and examined himself in the mirror. ___Well, I look like little red riding hood, but I suppose that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make if it means saving my hide._

He tested the garment with a wandless ___incendio_ and was pleased to watch the flame vanish harmlessly into the red folds.

___Well... here goes nothing_.

~§~

Harry stood in front of the gates to the tournament arena. In moments, he would be facing a Hungarian Horntail, hoping to grab a golden egg from its clutches.

He'd listened attentively to the other competitors, but couldn't tell what they were doing. All he heard was the roaring of both the crowd and of the dragons. He absently wondered if any of them had known about the task beforehand. Would he be accused of cheating for using his cloak?

His thoughts were cut short when the gate in front of him opened.

Harry walked carefully into the stadium, trying his best not to feel terrified by the dragon that was crouching not forty feet away from him. His plan was quite straightforward: goad the best into breathing fire, then use the stolen magic to stun it. It turned out, however, that no goading was required. He'd hardly made it into the stadium before the reptile let lose a torrent of flame in his direction. The crowd gasped loudly when Harry didn't move out of the way.

It was an amazing, if terrifying experience. The fire roared around him, but all he felt was a light breeze and a slight warmth. Then, the fire coiled around him, hugging his body tightly before dissipating into his cloak.

The resulting rush of magic could only be described as euphoric. It writhed and tingled beneath his skin, begging to be let free. It took massive concentration just to focus on his surroundings.

Harry spared a glance to the crowd. Everyone that he could see was gaping at him in disbelief. The only exceptions were the headmasters and headmistress. He couldn't help but smile at Dumbledore, whose look of pride was unmistakable.

His attention was snapped back to the dragon. It had recovered and was arching it's neck, ready to attempt to incinerate him once again. Harry aimed his wand at the beast's head and waited for the perfect moment.

As soon as it opened it's mouth, Harry fired his stunner, using as much of the stolen magic as he could muster. The spell blasted forward, hitting the dragon square in the face, and sending Harry stumbling backwards from the recoil. For a moment nothing happened. Then, in what seemed like slow motion, the dragon fell backwards, landing with a crash on the rocks behind its nest.

No one made a sound as Harry carefully climbed over the rocks and towards the eggs. They remained silent when he carefully lifted the golden prize and tucked it safely under his arm. It was only once he left the arena that the crowd recovered from its collective shock and burst into applause.


	9. Chapter 9

**A.N.: Sorry I haven't updated in ages! I've been spending time with my family. Strangely enough, they don't like it when I spend hours ignoring them in order to write. **

**I got a few comments about the whole gay/romance side of this story. A friendly reminder to all of you: there are two versions of this story. One is published here, and will be rather tame (no explicit sex), and another is published on _archive of our own_. The one on AO3 is the one that will eventually have all the romantic elements. I'll try to downplay the romance in this one for those of you who don't like that sort of thing, but still want to read my story. (Note: so far, the two stories are identical. I'll let you know when they diverge.) Also note that if you leave questions/comments on AO3, I can reply to them more easily.**

**I'm also considering rewriting the first chapter eventually as I feel it is not representative of the writing in later chapters. Does that seem like a good idea? Oh, and I sill don't have a beta... perhaps I should get one.**

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The school seemed conflicted over Harry's performance during the first task. On one hand, he'd received the best score of all the contestants, and it was generally acknowledged that his performance was the most spectacular. Fleur's sleeping charm, while effective, didn't seem to capture the publics imagination. Cedric's transfigured dog was, in Harry opinion, an incredibly risky plan. He was actually quite surprised the Hufflepuff scored so highly. He suspected most of the points were awarded for the impressive transfiguration, rather than the actual plan. Krum, on the other hand, had used something much more reliable, but it wasn't quite as exciting as single-handedly stunning a dragon.

And so, in spite of his reputation, the students couldn't help be feel proud. No one had seemed to make the connection between his cloak and the fire immunity, though. There was plenty of speculation. Some people seemed to think he'd found a way to temporarily become intangible, others insisted he must have performed some dark ritual to ward off the flames. The most bizarre theory he heard, though, came in the form of a direct question.

He'd been sitting in the library, searching through his spell encyclopedia for anything that might help him translate the clue, when a Ravenclaw girl sat opposite him and asked: "Are you a fire elemental?"

Harry recognized her as same girl who had asked him about the wine fountain in the chamber of secrets.

"Um... no. Not that I'm aware of."

"Are you sure? They're invulnerable to fire, you know. I thought you must be."

"Afraid not," he said with an amused smile, "I used alchemy to make a fire-eating cloak."

"Oh..." she looked slightly disappointed. "My great uncle was an alchemist. He promised to make me a hat that would change my hair colour every time I put it on, but he died in a freak tea-cosy accident before he could finish it."

She stared at his spell encyclopedia.

"That isn't anywhere near complete, you know. The 1846 edition had nearly twice as many spells, but people thought it was too heavy. Father has a copy. He uses it to press flowers."

"I'm sorry, but do you mind telling me your name?"

"Oh, yes. My name. I should tell you, I suppose. It's only polite."

She fiddled with her hair for a moment. After an uncomfortable silence, Harry cleared his throat.

"Oh, yes! It's Luna. Sorry. I was distracted by all the dust."

Harry couldn't help but laugh.

"I could make you that hat, if you like" He offered, "it should be easy enough."

"No, thank you. I like my hair the way it is. You're right, though. You're not a fire elemental. They don't like giving gifts."

Then, as abruptly as she'd arrive, Luna stood up and walked out of the library.

~§~

Having more or less finished the first item on his summer list, learning occlumency, Harry decided to move on to his next goal, finding some way to make his experiments undetectable. Skeeter's article had demonstrated quite clearly that it was all too easy to figure out what he was doing. And now that everyone knew he spent his time in abandoned classrooms playing with powerful magic, the chances that people would try to spy on him had only increased.

He dug through his trunk and retrieved the books on warding he'd purchased in Diagon alley. Then, not wanting to put of with the stares and whispers of the common room, gathered his things and made his way to a secluded corner in the back of the library.

Warding, it turned out, came in three different categories. There were reactive wards, which fed off the magic caught within them, triggered wards, which did nothing until someone activated them using their own magic, and temporary wards, which were given magic on casting, but would eventually wear out.

The runes at Hogwarts were examples of reactive wards. They had been set up during the time of the founders, and had been feeding off the magic on the grounds ever since. All the creatures in the forest, in the lake, and the various Hogwarts inhabitants helped strengthen the wards and keep them fuelled. They also fed off the ambient magic that permeates all space, but that was negligible compared to the power they gained from the magical beings on the Hogwarts grounds.

Triggered wards were less common. They had been quite popular as last resort security systems. If someone managed to breach all the other defences around someone's house, the caster could trigger the wards with a large burst of magic to activate them. They tended to have very powerful, albeit very brief, effects, and required a lot of magic to trigger.

Temporary wards were probably the most straightforward. The caster put of the wards and infused them with some of their magic. When the magic ran out, the wards would vanish. Harry decided that temporary wards would be the best place to start. He only needed wards that would stay up for a few hours. After he was done with his experiments, it didn't matter if they stayed up.

All wards depended on the same basic principle, though. Similarly to enchanting, the caster would transfer runes onto the object to be warded. However, unlike enchantments, wards required runes to be placed in multiple locations. The runes would become the corners of the wards perimeter, and everything trapped within them would be effected.

Wards also contained a feature that Harry had never seen before in any other form of spell: memory. Wards were capable of maintaining a list of people who would remain unaffected by their presence. The mechanics behind spell memory were much too complicated to decipher in a day, though. Harry suspected it would be a long time before he could use it in any original way.

That was a project for another day, though. For now, he needed to learn to ward a room to hide his experiments. Only after he gained some privacy would he be able to continue with his experiments.

~§~

As much as Harry had dreaded the first task, the Yule Ball had caused him even more worry. He would gladly have skipped it, but champions were required to attend. And so, rather than trying to solve the hint for the second task, he spent his time trying to find someone to ask to the Ball. He'd briefly toyed with the idea of asking a boy, only to decide that it wouldn't be worth it. He was subject to enough scrutiny as it was. No need to draw any more attention to himself.

In the end, he went with Luna. He didn't know her terribly well, but she seemed to be one of the only girls who could stand to be seen with him. He could probably have asked a Slytherin – the house all but worshipped him after his stunt with the fire cloak – but that would only confirm the rumours. Even though the rest of the school had long ago decided he was dark, he refused to do anything that would validate their opinion. The only indulgence he allowed himself was accepting Malfoy's help in potions, but that was just to ward off Snape's ire.

Luna, he learned, had a reputation of her own (albeit one that was far less sinister). Their appearance at the ball had caused something of a stir, but nothing compared to Harry's earlier rumours. The general wisdom was that Harry had more or less tricked Luna into going. No one else, they reasoned, would be mad enough to go with him. Luna didn't seem to mind, though. She was far more interested in the invisible creatures infesting the hall.

~§~

Weeks had passed, and Harry still hadn't decoded the hint from the egg. His first guess was that the sound was some sort of message. He'd hit it with every translation charm he could find, though, and none of them worked. His current theory was that it was the cry of some dangerous beast. Knowing what the creature was would certainly help him fight it, but he decided that he would split his time learning some spells that would be useful in combat. If he failed to identify the cry, he needed something to fall back on.

On the bright side, he was now fairly good at casting temporary wards. He'd discovered a particularly useful one that protected the walls of the room from spell damage. Since discovering the ward, he had been able to cast powerful blasting hexes, impaling curses, conjuring acid, and all manner of other dangerous combat magic without having to worry about wrecking whatever classroom he chose.

Conjuring acid was a particularly fun trick Harry had recently mastered. The name annoyed him, though, since he didn't actually conjure acid. Contrary to popular belief, conjuring didn't make something appear out of thin air. Rather, it took particles of whatever was around and rapidly duplicated them. Water was often conjured by using moisture from the air. (Harry had learned this by attempting to conjure water in a vacuum. It didn't work.) More elaborate conjuring usually involved conjuring something simple, like water, or carbon, and then transfiguring it as it was created. Conjuring acid was particularly easy for Harry, since water was a large component.

He was slightly weary of using anything too creative during the tournament, though. A lot of his more experimental magic could be dark, for all he knew. He had translated hundreds of runes, and was having great fun testing original combinations. He could do all sorts interesting things: flip objects inside-out, make objects incredibly heavy (he reversed the feather-light charm), slow things down or speed them up, make them freeze or burn from the inside, stretch them till they split in half, compress them into a dense sphere... All these things could all be useful, but a lot of them would also be fatal if cast on a human. If one of them was dark and he used it in front of the whole school there would certainly be consequences.

His schoolmates had grown even more suspicious of him. He hadn't thought it was possible, but they had. Small groups of students had formed a sort of club dedicated to tracking him down and keeping tabs on him. Ever since Skeeter had mentioned that he practiced spells in abandoned classrooms, people had speculated over what he was doing. Now, though, they were actively trying to find out. If he used something dark during the tournament, one of the Harry hunters (a name he'd appropriated from his cousin) would surely figure it out and report him.

___But lamenting over that won't help me_, Harry though. ___If I die during the second task it won't matter what anyone else thinks._ With an exasperated sigh, Harry continued drilling battle spells.

~§~

Harry stood with the other champions at the edge of the lake. He'd tried everything he could to decode the egg's clue, but nothing had worked. And now time had finally run out.

___The lake? Fuck... I don't know how to breath underwater!_ Inside, Harry was panicking. He couldn't let anyone know, though. Panic would draw attention, and attention birthed new rumours. He casually watched the other contestants. ___Maybe they'll use a spell I can copy..._ Harry discretely activated his glasses.

Ludo's voice rang out over the grounds. "Well, all our champions are ready. The second task will start on my whistle. They will each have one hour to recover what has been taken from them. On the count of three..."

Everyone removed their robes, revealing bathing suits. Harry wandlessly transfigured himself a bathing suit and mirrored them.

"One."

Cedric and Fleur raised their wands.

"Two."

Whatever Krum was going to try, it didn't use a wand, so Harry decided to focus his attention on the other two.

"Three!"

Both Cedric and Fleur cast the same spell, and Harry quickly memorized the seven runes involved. Only one of them was new, and the shape was simple enough for him to remember. The other contestants all charged into the water while Harry tried to formulate a plan.

___Ludo said we had to recover something that was taken, so I need a way to navigate the lake..._

He glanced at the water and noted with some satisfaction that he could quite easily follow the other contestants using their magical core. ___I could just follow one of them..._ He noticed something else, though. There appeared to be four other humans at the bottom of the lake. They were quite noticeable, actually. There was plenty of magic in the lake, but few things shone as brightly as the magical core of a witch or wizard (or goblin, or centaur... but they weren't likely to show up underwater.) ___Okay, that's probably what we have to save..._

People were muttering int he stands, now. He could see professor Dumbledore looking at him with a worried expression.

Harry remembered an idea he had had a few weeks ago. It wasn't something he could test in a classroom, though, so he didn't know if it would work. But if it did... A grin broke out over his face.

With an excessively dramatic wand flourish, Harry cast two spells on himself. One was a modification of the feather-light charm that would make him all but weightless. The other was a partial transfiguration of his skin that made it extremely hydrophobic. Over the summer, he'd read an article about a species of ants that made rafts by interlocking their bodies. They were hydrophobic enough that they could float in spite of their weight. So, if his spells worked as he'd intended, he should be able to walk on water.

Harry took a few tentative steps into the lake and promptly fell over. He was floating on the surface, though. He tried to stand up only to topple over once more. A few of the audience members started to laugh, and Harry couldn't help but join in. ___Not exactly the dramatic display I was hoping for, but at least it works. I suppose I'll need a balancing charm._ Harry cast the final spell on himself and carefully stood up. After a few test steps, he was confidently striding along the surface.

___Wish I could use this for Quidditch_, he mused. Balancing charms were banned from most sports, as they made it nearly impossible to fall over. You could attempt life-threatening manoeuvres without having to fear the consequences. The triwizard tournament wasn't "most sports", though.

Harry glanced down at the water and was pleased to find that he was making much better time than the other contestants. Humans were generally much faster when walking than they were when swimming, and they would be slowed even further by the creatures that inhabited the lake. So while the others struggled to fight off aquatic beasts, he walked safely across the surface. If it weren't for the mix of booing and cheering coming from the crowds, he might have enjoyed it.

Finally, he was standing above the four "stolen" people. He carefully cast the charm he'd seen Cedric and Fleur do, and then cancelled his other spells. The effect was immediate, and Harry was plunged into the dark waters of the lake. He cast a silent ___lumos_ and began swimming straight down.

When he arrived at the lake's bottom, he found four people tied down with chains, apparently asleep. Harry immediately recognized three of them: Luna, Hermione, and Cho Chang. The fourth was a young girl who he assumed was related to Fleur in some way. (He absently noted that it seemed a bit odd. Everyone else was rescuing their date from the Yule Ball.) Sparing no thought for the others, Harry broke Luna's chains and headed towards the surface. Once upon a time he might have tried to save Hermione as well, but now he couldn't really be bothered to care.

~§~

Harry easily won the second task. His water walking trick had allowed him to complete it in just under ten minutes, less than a fifth of the time it had taken the others. The judges had all been suitably impressed, and, once again, everyone was speculating about how he'd done it. Dark magic was the most popular hypothesis. Harry would have told any of them how he'd done it, but no one bothered to ask.

Sirius was incredibly proud of him, though. Harry's godfather had finally managed to get through his trial, and was now making plans to have the young Gryffindor move in with him. From what Sirius told Harry, Dumbledore seemed to be opposed to the idea. Harry would normally have been overjoyed by the news, but he was too worried about the third task. The champions had been informed that the final task would be a maze. There were no hints, no special ways to prepare. All Harry could do was learn as many spells as possible and hope he didn't encounter anything that he couldn't handle.

Skeeter had published another article speculating about his remarkable feats. It didn't make any concrete claims about him, but it did heavily imply that his performance made use of "spells that can't be found in any ministry sanctioned textbook." It was technically true; some of the spells he'd used weren't in ___any_ textbook. The implication was clear, though.

Harry found that his preparation schedule for the second task worked just as well for the third. He spent all his free time locked in a heavily warded classroom, practicing spells on conjured dummies and other props. He'd finally gotten around to transfiguring some more interesting substances, like graphene and aerogel. He'd toyed with the idea of using fluorine, but since it was an element as fundamental as gold, transfiguring it in large quantities was all but impossible.

Transfiguration was odd that way. As far as Harry could tell, there was no easy way to know what would be challenging to make. He'd discovered some general guidelines. Most elements were difficult, with the exception of carbon. Organic compounds were generally more demanding than inorganic ones (blood for example, was all but impossible to transfigure). But apart from that, the rules appeared to be entirely random.

Harry was currently seeing how he could transfigure the air. If he could drain a space of oxygen and use a bubble-head charm he should be able to outlast any beast that needed to breathe. It was proving remarkably difficult, however.

He was about to attempt replacing the oxygen with helium when there was a knock at the door. Harry froze. That shouldn't have been possible; the room was warded with wizard repelling wards. With a pair of wandless charms he quickly gathered his notes and packed away his equipment. Satisfied that everything was in order, he opened the door to find a very smug looking Draco Malfoy.

"My, my, Potter. You ___are_ a rather hard one to find." He sounded incredibly pleased with himself.

Harry narrowed his eyes.

"Can I help you with something, Malfoy?"

"I doubt it. I have something you might like, though."

The blond held up a scroll.

"And that is?..."

"A list of everything that will be in the final task." replied the Slytherin, "I got it from father. Said I wanted to use it to win some bets."

"People are betting on what's going to be in the maze?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Potter. People are betting on who's going to win."


End file.
